




-V^ 
















■^, .A\ 






GEORGE • ELIOT 
DAY • BY • DAY 



EDITED BY 

ALICE AND 
EDWARD A. BRYANT 



m 



NEW . YORK 

THOMAS • Y • CROWELL • COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 




Copyright 1912, 
By Thomas Y. Crowell Company. 



// 



CCU327024 



Man or woman who publishes writ- 
ings inevitably assumes the office of 
teacher or influencer of the public 
mind. Let him protest as he will that 
he only seeks to amuse, and has no 
pretension to do more than while away 
an hour of leisure or weariness — 
"the idle singer of an empty day" — 
he can no more escape influencing the 
moral taste, and with it the action of 
the intelligence, than a setter of fash- 
ions in furniture and dress can fill the 
shops with his designs and leave the 
garniture of persons and houses unaf- 
fected by his industry. 

Leaves from a Note-Book 



preface 

George Eliot probably ranks first among modern 
writers in the number of pithy, epigrammatic, 
quotable sayings to which she has given utterance. 
Her books are replete Vvdth pointed witticisms, 
helpful thoughts, and fine sentiments. Some of her 
best things, however, introduced in unostentatious 
fashion and frequently expressed through the me- 
dium of minor characters, slip unappreciated past 
the most devoted reader of her absorbing pages. 
In this year book the opportunity has been taken 
of calling attention to a selected Hst of striking 
passages well worth pondering for their own in- 
trinsic value, priceless gems from the store con- 
tained in the works of the great novelist, essayist, 
and poet. 

So far as possible, it will be noted, extracts have 
been placed under dates for which they are appro- 
priate. It has also been thought desirable to 
preserve a certain continuity of thought in the 
arrangement of the selections. 



[vl 



Slanuati? 



JANUARY FIRST 

I HOPE I see your honor and your reverence well, 
and wishing you health and long life and a happy 

New Year. 

Silas Marner, Ch. 1 1 

What should we all do without the calendar, 
when we want to put off a disagreeable duty? The 
admirable arrangements of the solar system, by 
which our time is measured, always supply us with 
a term before which it is hardly worth while to set 
about anything we are disinclined to. 

Daniel Deronda, Ch. 32 

JANUARY SECOND 

The presence of a noble nature, generous in its 
wishes, ardent in its charity, changes the lights for 
us: we begin to see things again in their larger, 
quieter masses, and to believe that we too can be 
seen and judged in the wholeness of our character. 

Middlemarch, Ch. 76 

JANUARY THIRD 

Nay, falter not — 'tis an assured good 
To seek the noblest — 'tis your only good 
Now you have seen it ; for that higher vision 
Poisons all meaner choice for ever more. 

Felix HoU, Ch. 49 



JANUARY FOURTH 

When a man gets a good berth, half the deserving 
must come after. 

Middlemarch, Ch. 52 

JANUARY FIFTH 

Comprehensive talkers are apt to be tiresome 
when we are not athirst for information, but, to be 
quite fair, we must admit that superior reticence is 
a good deal due to the lack of matter. Speech is 
often barren; but silence also does not necessarily 
brood over a full nest. Your still fowl, blinking at 
you without remark, may all the while be sitting 
on one addled nestegg; and when it takes to cackling, 
will have nothing to announce but that addled 
delusion. 

Felix Holt, Ch. 16 

JANUARY SIXTH 

To be right in great memorable moments is per- 
haps the thing we need most desire for ourselves. 

Felix Holt, Ch. 3 2 

JANUARY SEVENTH 

What makes life dreary is the want of motive; 
but once beginning to act with that penitential, 
loving purpose you have in your mind, there will 
be unexpected satisfactions — there will be newly- 
opening needs — continually coming to carry you 
on from day to day. You will find your life growing 
like a plant. 

Daniel Deronda, Ch. 65 

[2] 



JANUARY EIGHTH 

A character at unity with itself — that performs 
what it intends, subdues every counteracting impulse 
and has no visions beyond the distinctly possible — 
is strong by its very negations. 

The Mill on the Floss, Bk. V, Ch. 2 

JANUARY NINTH 

We prepare ourselves for sudden deeds by the 
reiterated choice of good or evil which gradually 
determines character. 

Romola, Ch. 2^ 

JANUARY TENTH 

What do we live for, if it is not to make life less 
difficult to each other? 

Middlemarch, Ch. 72 

JANUARY ELEVENTH 

That is the bitterest of all — to wear the yoke of 
our own wrong-doing. But if you submitted to 
that, as men submit to maiming or a lifelong in- 
curable disease? — and made the unalterable wrong 
a reason for more effort towards a good that may 
do something to counterbalance the evil? One who 
has committed irremediable errors may be scourged 
by that consciousness into a higher course than is 
common. There are many examples. Feeling what 
it is to have spoiled one life may well make us long 
to save other lives from being spoiled. 

Daniel Deronda, Ch. 36 

[3I 



JANUARY TWELFTH 

Failure after long perseverance is much grander 
than never to have a striving good enough to be 
called a failure. 

Middlemarch, Ch. 22 

JANUARY THIRTEENTH 

Our deeds still travel with us from afar, 

And what we have been makes us what we are. 

Middlemarch, Ch. 70 

JANUARY FOURTEENTH 

I know it is a vain thought to flee from the work 
that God appoints us, for the sake of finding a 
greater blessing to our own souls, as if we could 
choose for ourselves where we shall find the fulness 
of the Divine Presence, instead of seeking it where 
alone it is to be found, in loving obedience. 

Adam Bede, Ch. 50 

JANUARY FIFTEENTH 

Men rise the higher as their task is high. 
The task being well achieved. A woman's rank 
Lies in the fulness of her womanhood; 
Therein alone she is royal. 

Armgart, Sc. 2 

JANUARY SIXTEENTH 

I've been a great deal happier, since I have given 
up thinking about what is easy and pleasant, and 
being discontented because I couldn't have my 
own will. Our Hfe is determined for us; and it 
makes the mind very free when we give up wishing, 

[4] 



and only think of bearing what is laid upon us, 
and doing what is given us to do. 

The Mill on the Floss, Bk. F, Ch. i 

JANUARY SEVENTEENTH 

It has been taught us, as you know, that the 
reward of one duty is the power to fulfil another — so 
said Ben Azai. 

Daniel Deronda, Ch. 46 

JANUARY EIGHTEENTH 

What is opportunity to the man who can't use it? 
An unfecundated egg, which the waves of time 
wash away into nonentity. 

Amos Barton, Ch. 5 

JANUARY NINETEENTH 

Nay, never falter: no great deed is done 

By falterers who ask for certainty. 

No good is certain, but the steadfast mind, 

The undivided will to seek the good: 

'Tis that compels the elements, and wrings 

A human music from the indifferent air. 

The greatest gift the hero leaves his race 

Is to have been a hero. Say we fail ! — 

We feed the high tradition of the world. 

And leave our spirit in our children's breasts. 

The Spanish Gypsy, Bk. 1 

JANUARY TWENTIETH 

Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine 
our deeds; and until we know what has been or will 
be the peculiar combination of outward with in- 

[5] 



ward facts, which constitutes a man's critical 
actions, it will be better not to think ourselves wise 
about his character. There is a terrible coercion in 
our deeds which may first turn the honest man into 
a deceiver, and then reconcile him to the change; 
for this reason — that the second wrong presents 
itself to him in the guise of the only practicable 
right. The action which before commission has 
been seen with that blended common-sense and 
fresh untarnished feeling which is the healthy eye 
of the soul, is looked at afterwards with the lens 
of apologetic ingenuity, through which all things 
that men call beautiful and ugly are seen to be made 
up of textures very much aUke. 

Adam Bede, Ch. 29 

JANUARY TWENTY-FIRST 

" Could if he would?" True greatness ever wills — 

It lives in wholeness if it live at all. 

And all its strength is knit with constancy. 

Arntgart, Sc. 2 

JANUARY TWENTY-SECOND 

He held that reliance to be a mark of genius; 
and certainly it is no mark to the contrary; genius 
consisting neither in self-conceit nor in humility, 
but in a power to make or do, not anything in general, 
but something in particular. Let him start for the 
Continent, then, without our pronouncing on his 
future. Among all forms of mistake, prophecy is the 
most gratuitous. 

Middlemarch, Ch. 10 
[6] 



JANUARY TWENTY-THIRD 

All people of broad, strong sense have an instinc- 
tive repugnance to the men of maxims; because 
such people early discern that the mysterious com- 
plexity of our life is not to be embraced by maxims, 
and that to lace ourselves up in formulas of that sort 
is to repress all the divine promptings and inspira- 
tions that spring from growing insight and sympa- 
thy. And the man of maxims is the popular repre- 
sentative of the minds that are guided in their moral 
judgment solely by general rules, thinking that 
these will lead them to justice by a ready-made 
patent method, without the trouble of exerting 
patience, discrimination, impartiality, — without 
any care to assure themselves whether they have 
the insight that comes from a hardly earned esti- 
mate of temptation, or from a Hfe vivid and intense 
enough to have created a wide fellow-feeling with 
all that is human. 

The Mill on the Floss, Bk. VII, Ch. 2 

JANUARY TWENTY-FOURTH 
CastiHan gentlemen 

Choose not their task — they choose to do it well. 

The Spanish Gypsy, Bk. I 

Man cannot choose his duties. You may choose 
to forsake your duties, and choose not to have the 
sorrow they bring. But you will go forth; and what 
will you find, my daughter? Sorrow without duty — 
bitter herbs, and no bread with them. 

Romola, Ch. 40 

[7I 



JANUARY TWENTY-FIFTH 

But I'm proof against that word failure. I've 
seen behind it. The only failure a man ought to 
fear is failure in cleaving to the purpose he sees to 
be best. As to just the amount of result he may see 
from his particular work — that's a tremendous 
uncertainty: the universe has not been arranged 
for the gratification of his feelings. As long as a 
man sees and believes in some great good, he'll 
prefer working towards that in the way he's best 
fit for, come what may. I put effects at their 
minimum, but I'd rather have the minimum of 
effect, if it's of the sort I care for, than the maximum 
of effect I don't care for — a lot of fine things that 
are not to my taste — and if they were, the con- 
ditions of holding them while the world is what 
it is, are such as would jar on me like grating metal. 

Fdix Holt, Ch. 45 

JANUARY TWENTY-SIXTH 

It's good to live only a moment at a time, as 
I've read in one of Mr. Wesley's books. It isn't 
for you and me to lay plans; we've nothing to do 
but to obey and to trust. 

Adam Bede, Ch. 3 

JANUARY TWENTY-SEVENTH 

Our lives make a moral tradition for our in- 
dividual selves, as the Hfe of mankind at large 
makes a moral tradition for the race; and to have 
once acted nobly seems a reason why we should 
always be noble. 

Romola, Ch. 39 

[81 



JANUARY TWENTY-EIGHTH 

A course of action which is in strictness a slowly 
prepared outgrowth of the entire character, is yet 
almost always traceable to a single impression as its 
point of apparent origin. 

Romola, Ch. 35 

JANUARY TWENTY-NINTH 

Whatever one does with a strong unhesitating 
outflow of will, has a store of motive that it would 
be hard to put into words. Some deeds seem little 
more than interjections which give vent to the 
long passion of a life. 

Daniel Deronda, Ch. 20 

JANUARY THIRTIETH 

We are children of a large family, and must learn, 
as such children do, not to expect that our hurts 
will be made much of — to be content with little 
nurture and caressing, and help each other the more. 

Adam Bede^ Ch. 27 

JANUARY THIRTY-FIRST 

Children demand that their heroes should be 
fleckless, and easily believe them so: perhaps a first 
discovery to the contrary is hardly a less revolution- 
ary shock to a passionate child than the threatened 
downfall of habitual beliefs which makes the world 
seem to totter for us in maturer life. 

Daniel Deronda, Ch. 16 



[9] 



fthmavt 

FEBRUARY FIRST 

THE strongest principle of growth lies in human 
choice. 

Daniel Deronda, Ch. 42 

FEBRUARY SECOND 

The devil tempts us not — 'tis we tempt him, 
Beckoning his skill with opportunity. 

Felix Holt, Ch. 47 

FEBRUARY THIRD 

"I call it improper pride to let fools' notions 
hinder you from doing a good action. There's no 
sort of work," said Caleb, . . . "that could ever be 
done well, if you minded what fools say. You must 
have it inside you that your plan is right, and that 
plan you must follow." 

Middlemarch, Ch. 40 

FEBRUARY FOURTH 

I would never choose to withdraw myself from the 
labor and common burthen of the world; but I do 
choose to withdraw myself from the push and the 
scramble for money and position. Any man is at 
liberty to call me a fool, and say that mankind are 
benefited by the push and the scramble in the long- 
run. But I care for the people who Uve now and will 

[II] 



not be living when the long-run comes. As it is, 
I prefer going shares with the unlucky. 

Felix Holt, Ch. 27 

FEBRUARY FIFTH 
For high device is still the highest force, 
And he who holds the secret of the wheel 
May make the rivers do what work he would. 
With thoughts impalpable we clutch men's souls, 
Weaken the joints of armies, make them fly 
Like dust and leaves before the viewless wind. 
Tell me what's mirrored in the tiger's heart, 
I'll rule that too. 

The Spanish Gypsy, Bk. Ill 

FEBRUARY SIXTH 

The responsibility of tolerance lies with those who 
have the wider vision. 

The Mill on the Floss, Bk. VII, Ch. 3 

It is a narrow mind which cannot look at a subject 
from various points of view. 

Middlemarch, Ch. 7 

FEBRUARY SEVENTH 
I cannot bear to think what life would be 
With high hope shrunk to endurance, stunted aims 
Like broken lances ground to eating-knives. 
A self sunk down to look with level eyes 
At low achievement, doomed from day to day 
To distaste of its consciousness. 

Armgart, Sc. 2 

[12I 



FEBRUARY EIGHTH 

"Ah," said Adam, "I like to read about Moses 
best, in th' Old Testament. He carried a hard 
business well through, and died when other folks 
were going to reap the fruits: a man must have 
courage to look at his hfe so, and think what'U 
come of it after he's dead and gone. A good solid 
bit o' work lasts: if it's only laying a floor down, 
somebody's the better for it being done well, besides 
the man as does it." 

Adam Bede, Ch. 50 

FEBRUARY NINTH 

It's poor work allays settin' the dead above the 
livin'. We shall all on us be dead sometime, I reckon 
— it 'ud be better if folks 'ud make much on us be- 
forehand, istid o' beginnin' when we're gone. It's but 
little good you'll do a-watering the last year's crop. 

Adam Bede, Ch. 18 

FEBRUARY TENTH 

"Ignorance," says Ajax, "is a painless evil;" 
so, I should think, is dirt, considering the merry 
faces that go along with it. At any rate, cleanliness 
is sometimes a painful good, as any one can vouch 
who has had his face washed the wrong way, by 
a pitiless hand with a gold ring on the third finger. 

Mr. GilfiVs Love-Story, Ch. 3 

FEBRUARY ELEVENTH 

Ignorant kindness may have the effect of cruelty; 
but to be angry with it as if it were direct cruelty 
would be an ignorant wwkindness. 

Daniel Deronda, Ch. 59 

[13] 



FEBRUARY TWELFTH 

For what is fame 
But the benignant strength of One, transformed 
To joy of Many? Tributes, plaudits come 
As necessary breathing of such joy. 

Armgart, Sc. i 

FEBRUARY THIRTEENTH 

The growing good of the worid is partly dependent 
on unhistoric acts: and that things are not so ill 
with you and me as they might have been, is half 
owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden 
life, and rest in unvisited tombs. 

Middlemarch, Finale 

FEBRUARY FOURTEENTH 

There is a power in the direct glance of a sincere 
and loving human soul, which will do more to dissi- 
pate prejudice and kindle charity than the most 
elaborate arguments. 

Janet's Repentance, Ch. 12 

FEBRUARY FIFTEENTH 

Expenditure — like ugliness and errors — becomes 
a totally new thing when we attach our own person- 
ality to it, and measure it by that wide difference 
which is manifest (in our own sensations) between 
ourselves and others. 

Middlemarch, Ch. 58 

FEBRUARY SIXTEENTH 

Duty has a trick of behaving unexpectedly — 
something like a heavy friend whom we have amiably 

[14] 



asked to visit us, and who breaks his leg within our 
gates. 

Middlemarch, Ch. 52 

FEBRUARY SEVENTEENTH 

A loss which falls on another because we have 
done right is not to lie upon our conscience. 

Middlemarch, Ch. 40 

FEBRUARY EIGHTEENTH 

Solomon's Proverbs, I think, have omitted to say, 
that as the sore palate findeth grit, so an uneasy 
consciousness heareth innuendoes. 

Middlemarch, Ch. 31 

FEBRUARY NINETEENTH 

Lives are enlarged in different ways. I dare say 
some would never get their eyes opened if it were 
not for a violent shock from the consequences of 
their own actions. 

Daniel Deronda, Ch. 36 

FEBRUARY TWENTIETH 

We can often detect a man's deficiencies in what 
he admires more clearly than in what he condemns, — • 
in the sentiments he presents as laudable rather 
than in those he decries. 

Essays: Worldliness and Other-worldliness 

FEBRUARY TWENTY-FIRST 

The egoism which enters into our theories does 
not affect their sincerity; rather, the more our 
egoism is satisfied, the more robust is our belief. 

Middlemarch, Ch. 53 

[15] 



FEBRUARY TWENTY-SECOND 

The blessed work of helping the world forward, 
happily does not wait to be done by perfect men; 
and I should imagine that neither Luther nor John 
Bunyan, for example, would have satisfied the 
modern demand for an ideal hero, who believes 
nothing but what is true, feels nothing but what is 
exalted, and does nothing but what is graceful. 
The real heroes, of God's making, are quite different: 
they have their natural heritage of love and con- 
science which they drew in with their mother's 
milk; they know one or two of those deep spiritual 
truths which are only to be won by long wrestling 
with their own sins and their own sorrows; they 
have earned faith and strength so far as they have 
done genuine work; but the rest is dry barren theory, 
blank prejudice, vague hearsay. Their insight is 
blended with mere opinion; their sympathy is 
perhaps confined in narrow conduits of doctrine, 
instead of flowing forth with the freedom of a stream 
that blesses every weed in its course; obstinacy or 
self-assertion will often interfuse itself with their 
grandest impulses; and their very deeds of self- 
sacrifice are sometimes only the rebound of a passion- 
ate egoism, 

Janet's Repentance, Ch. lo 

FEBRUARY TWENTY-THIRD 

It is the moment when our resolution seems about 

to become irrevocable — when the fatal iron gates 

are about to close upon us — that tests our strength. 

Then, after hours of clear reasoning and firm con- 

[i6] 



viction, we snatch at any sophistry that will nullify 
our long struggles, and bring us the defeat that we 
love better than victory. 

The Mill on the Floss, Bk. V, Ch. 3 

FEBRUARY TWENTY-FOURTH 

It is seldom that the miserable can help regarding 
their misery as a wrong inflicted by those who are 
less miserable. 

Silas Marner, Ch. 1 2 

FEBRUARY TWENTY-FIFTH 

Have not men, shut up in solitary imprisonment, 
found an interest in marking the moments by 
straight strokes of a certain length on the wall, 
until the growth of the sum of straight strokes, 
arranged, in triangles, has become a mastering 
purpose? Do we not while away moments of inanity 
or fatigued waiting by repeating some trivial move- 
ment or sound, until the repetition has bred a want, 
which is incipient habit? That will help us to under- 
stand how the love of accumulating money grows 
an absorbing passion in men whose imaginations, 
even in the very beginning of their hoard, showed 
them no purpose beyond it. 

Silas Marner, Ch. 2 

FEBRUARY TWENTY-SIXTH 

If there is an angel who records the sorrows of 
men as well as their sins, he knows how many and 
deep are the sorrows that spring from false ideas 
for which no man is culpable. 

Silas Marner, Ch. i 

[17] 



FEBRUARY TWENTY-SEVENTH 

For an enthusiastic spirit to meet continually 
the fixed indifference of men familiar with the object 
of his enthusiasm is the acceptance of a slow martyr- 
dom, beside which the fate of a missionary toma- 
hawked without any considerate rejection of his 
doctrines seems hardly worthy of comparison. 

Daniel Deronda, Ch. 42 

FEBRUARY TWENTY-EIGHTH 

The emptiness of all things, from politics to 
pastimes, is never so striking to us as when we fail 
in them. 

Daniel Deronda, Ch. 16 

FEBRUARY TWENTY-NINTH 

We should be churlish creatures if we could have 
no joy in our fellow-mortals' joy, unless it were in 
agreement with our theory of righteous distribution 
and our highest ideal of human good: what sour 
corners our mouths would get — our eyes, what 
frozen glances ! and all the while our own possessions 
and desires would not exactly adjust themselves 
to our ideal. We must have some comradeship with 
imperfection; and it is, happily, possible to feel grati- 
tude even where we discern a mistake that may 
have been injurious, the vehicle of the mistake 
being an affectionate intention prosecuted through 
a lifetime of kindly offices. 

Daniel Deronda, Ch. 59 



[18] 



Piau^ 



MARCH FIRST 

ALL earthly things have their lull: even on nights 
when the most unappeasable wind is raging, 
there will be a moment of stillness before it crashes 
among the boughs again, and storms against the 
windows, and howls like a thousand lost demons 
through the keyholes. 

Amos Barton, Ch. lo 



MARCH SECOND 

No one has strength given to do what is unnatural. 
It is mere cowardice to seek safety in negations. No 
character becomes strong in that way. You will be 
thrown into the world some day, and then every 
rational satisfaction of your nature that you deny 
now will assault you Uke a savage appetite. 

The Mill on the Floss, Bk. V, Ch. 3 



MARCH THIRD 

I suppose all phrases of mere compliment have 
their turn to be true. A man is occasionally grateful 
when he says "Thank you." It is rather hard upon 
him that he must use the same words with which 
all the world declines a disagreeable invitation. 
The Mill on the Floss, Bk. VI, Ch. 2 
[19] 



MARCH FOURTH 

To manage men one ought to have a sharp mind 
in a velvet sheath. 

Romola, Ch. 39 

He who rules 
Must humor full as much as he commands; 
Must let men vow impossibilities; 
Grant folly's prayers that hinder folly's wish 
And serve the ends of wisdom. 

The Spanish Gypsy, Bk. IV 

MARCH FIFTH 

We must not inquire too curiously into motives. 
They are apt to become feeble in the utterance: 
the aroma is mixed with the grosser air. We must 
keep the germinating grain away from the light. 

Middlemarch, Ch. 2 

MARCH SIXTH 

Looking at the mother, you might hope that the 
daughter would become like her, which is a pros- 
pective advantage equal to a dowry — the mother 
too often standing behind the daughter like a malig- 
nant prophecy — *' Such as I am, she will shortly be." 

Middlemarch, Ch. 24 

MARCH SEVENTH 

Oppositions have the illimitable range of objection 
at command, which need never stop short at the 
boundary of knowledge, but can draw forever on 
the vasts of ignorance. 

Middlemarch, Ch. 45 

[20] 



MARCH EIGHTH 

I've never any pity for conceited people, because 

I think they carry their comfort about with them. 

The Mill on the Floss, Bk. V, Ch. 4 

An ass may bray a good while before he shakes 
the stars down. 

Romola, Ch. 50 

MARCH NINTH 

Pride only helps us to be generous; it never makes 
us so, any more than vanity makes us witty. 

Middlemarch, Ch. 8 

MARCH TENTH 

Very little achievement is required in order to 
pity another man's shortcomings. 

Middlemarch, Ch. 21 

MARCH ELEVENTH 

Our vanities differ as our noses do: all conceit 
is not the same conceit, but varies in correspondence 
with the minutiae of mental make in which one of 
us differs from another. 

Middlemarch, Ch. 15 

MARCH TWELFTH 

Prudence is but conceit 
Hoodwinked by ignorance. There's naught exists 
That is not dangerous and holds not death 
For souls or bodies. Prudence turns its helm 
To flee the storm and lands 'mid pestilence. 
Wisdom would end by throwing dice with folly 
But for dire passion which alone makes choice. 

The Spanish Gypsy, Bk. II 
[21] 



MARCH THIRTEENTH 

The power of being quiet carries a man well 
through moments of embarrassment. 

Daniel Deronda, Ch. 37 

MARCH FOURTEENTH 

Self-confidence is apt to address itself to an imag- 
inary dulness in others; as people who are well off 
speak in a cajoling tone to the poor, and those who 
are in the prime of life raise their voice and talk 
artificially to seniors, hastily conceiving them to 
be deaf and rather imbecile. 

Daniel Deronda, Ch. 5 

MARCH FIFTEENTH 

The deepest curse of wrong-doing, whether of the 
foolish or wicked sort, is that its effects are difficult 
to be undone. I suppose there is hardly, anything 
more to be shuddered at than that part of the history 
of disease which shows how, when a man injures 
his constitution by a life of vicious excess, his 
children and grandchildren inherit diseased bodies 
and minds, and how the effects of that unhappy 
inheritance continue to spread beyond our calcula- 
tion. 

Essays: Address to Working Men by Felix Holt 

MARCH SIXTEENTH 

There is no tyranny more complete than that 
which a self-centred negative nature exercises over 
a morbidly sensitive nature perpetually craving 
sympathy and support. The most independent 
people feel the effect of a man's silence in heightening 
[22I 



their value for his opinion — feel an additional 
triumph in conquering the reverence of a critic 
habitually captious and satirical. 

The Lifted Veil, Ch. i 

MARCH SEVENTEENTH 

*Xike enough," said Mrs. Poyser; "for the men 
are mostly so slow, their thoughts overrun 'em, an' 
they can only catch 'em by the tail. I can count 
a stocking- top while a man's getting's tongue ready; 
an' when he outs wi' his speech at last, there's 
little broth to be made on't. It's your dead chicks 
take the longest hatchin'. Howiver, I'm not denyin' 
the women are fooHsh: God Almighty made 'em 
to match the men." 

Adam Bede, Ch. 53 

MARCH EIGHTEENTH 

I have a belief of my own, and it comforts 
me. . . . That by desiring what is perfectly good, 
even when we don't quite know what it is and can- 
not do what we would, we are part of the divine 
power against evil — widening the skirts of light and 
making the struggle with darkness narrower. 

Middlemarch, Ch. 39 

MARCH NINETEENTH 

Scepticism can never be thoroughly applied, else 
life would come to a standstill: something we must 
believe in and do, and whatever that something 
may be called, it is virtually our own judgment, 
even when it seems like the most slavish reliance 
on another. 

Middlemarch, Ch. 23 

[23] 



MARCH TWENTIETH 

*'Not I, sir," said Felix; *'I should say, teach any 
truth you can, whether it's in the Testament or out 
of it. It's little enough anybody can get hold of, and 
still less what he can drive into the skulls of a 
pence-counting, parcel-tying generation, such as 
mostly fill your chapels." 

Felix Holt, Ch. $ 



MARCH TWENTY-FIRST 

I have always been thinking of the difTerent ways 
in which Christianity is taught, and whenever I 
find one way that makes it a wider blessing than 
any other, I cling to that as the truest — I mean 
that which takes in the most good of all kinds, and 
brings in the most people as shares in it. It is 
surely better to pardon too much, than to condemn 
too much. 

Middlemarch, Ch. 50 



MARCH TWENTY-SECOND 

I've seen pretty clear ever since I was a young un, 
as religion's something else besides doctrines and 
notions. I look at it as if the doctrines was like 
finding names for your feelings, so as you can talk 
of 'em when you've never known 'em, just as a 
man may talk o' tools when he knows their names, 
though he's never so much as seen 'em, still less 
handled 'em. 

Adam Bede, Ch. 17 

[24] 



MARCH TWENTY-THIRD 

Who shall put his finger on the work of justice, 
and say, "It is there"? Justice is like the Kingdom 
of God — it is not without us as a fact, it is within 
us as a great yearning. 

Romola, Ch. 67 

MARCH TWENTY-FOURTH 

But thee mustna undervally prayer. Prayer 
mayna bring money, but it brings us what no money 
can buy — a power to keep from sin, and be content 
with God's will, whatever He may please to send. 
If thee wouldst pray to God to help thee, and trust 
in His goodness, thee wouldstna be so uneasy about 
things. 

Adam Bede, Ch. 4 
MARCH TWENTY-FIFTH 

I've seen pretty clear, ever since I was a young 
un, as religion's something else besides notions. 
It isn't notions sets people doing the right thing — 
it's feelings. It's the same with the notions in re- 
ligion as it is with math'matics, — a man may be 
able to work problems straight off in's head as he 
sits by the fire and smokes his pipe; but if he has 
to make a machine or a building, he must have a 
wall and a resolution, and love something else better 
than his own ease. 

Adam Bede, Ch. 19 
MARCH TWENTY-SIXTH 

It is because sympathy is but a living again 
through our own past in a new form, that confession 
often prompts a response of confession. 

Janet's Repentance, Ch. 18 

[25] 



MARCH TWENTY-SEVENTH 
I think cheerfulness is a fortune in itself. 

Daniel Deronda, Ch. 24 

MARCH TWENTY-EIGHTH 

There is no creature whose inward being is so 
strong that it is not greatly determined by what 
lies outside it. 

Middlemarch, Finale 

MARCH TWENTY-NINTH 

I measure men's dulness by the devices they trust 
in for deceiving others. Your dullest animal of all 
is he who grins and says he doesn't mind just after 
he has had his shins kicked. 

Romola, Ch, 45 

MARCH THIRTIETH 

When one is grateful for something too good for 
common thanks, writing is less unsatisfactory than 
speech — one does not at least hear how inadequate 
the words are. 

Middlemarch, Ch. 8i 

MARCH THIRTY-FIRST 

It's rather a strong check to one's self-complacency 
to find how much of one's right doing depends on 
not being in want of money. A man will not be 
tempted to say the Lord's Prayer backward to please 
the devil, if he doesn't want the devil's services. 

Middlemarch, Ch. 63 

Poverty may be as bad as leprosy, if it divides us 
from what we most care for. 

Middlemarch, Ch. 54 
[26I 



april 



APRIL FIRST 

IN our springtime every day has its hidden 
growths in the mind, as it has in the earth when 
the little folded blades are getting ready to pierce 
the ground. 

Felix Holt, Ch. i8 

APRIL SECOND 

It has been well believed through many ages 
that the beginning of compunction is the beginning 
of a new life; that the mind which sees itself blame- 
less may be called dead in trespasses — in trespasses 
on the love of others, in trespasses on their weakness, 
in trespasses on all those great claims which are the 
image of our own need. 

Felix Holt, Ch. 13 

APRIL THIRD 

A little unpremeditated insincerity must be 
indulged under the stress of social intercourse. The 
talk even of an honest man must often represent 
merely his wish to be inoffensive or agreeable rather 
than his genuine opinion or feeling on the matter in 
hand. His thought, if uttered, might be wounding; 
or he has not the ability to utter it with exactness 
and snatches at a loose paraphrase; or he has really 
no genuine thought on the question and is driven to 
fill up the vacancy by borrowing the remarks in 

[27] 



vogue. These are the winds and currents we have 
all to steer amongst, and they are often too strong 
for our truthfulness or our wit. Let us not bear too 
hardly on each other for this common incidental 
frailty, or think that we rise superior to it by drop- 
ping all considerateness and deference. 

Theophrastus Such, Ch. 5 
APRIL FOURTH 

Let the wise be warned against too great readiness 
at explanation: it multiplies the sources of mistake, 
lengthening the sum for reckoners sure to go wrong. 

Middlemarch, Ch. 4$ 

APRIL FIFTH 

"Ahl" said Bartle, sneeringly, "the women are 
quick enough — they're quick enough. They 
know the rights of a story before they hear it, and 
can tell a man what his thoughts are before he 
knows 'em himself." 

Adam Bede, Ch. 53 

APRIL SIXTH 

Nemesis is lame, but she is of colossal stature, 
like the gods; and sometimes, while her sword is 
not yet unsheathed, she stretches out her huge left 
arm and grasps her victim. The mighty hand is 
invisible, but the victim totters under the dire 
clutch. 

Janet's Repentance, Ch. 13 

APRIL SEVENTH 

Speech is but broken light upon the depth 
Of the unspoken. 

The Spanish Gypsy, Bk. I 
[28] 



APRIL EIGHTH 
Truth has rough flavors if we bite it through. 

Armgart, Sc. 2 

The sublime delight of truthful speech to one 
who has the great gift of uttering it, will make itself 
felt even through the pangs of sorrow. 

Felix Holt, Ch. 46 

APRIL NINTH 

Falsehood is so easy, truth so difiicult. The 
pencil is conscious of a delightful facility in drawing 
a griffin — the longer the claws, and the larger the 
wings, the better; but that marvellous facility which 
we mistook for genius is apt to forsake us when we 
want to draw a real unexaggerated lion. Examine 
your words well, and you will find that even when 
you have no motive to be false, it is a very hard 
thing to say the exact truth, even about your own 
immediate feelings — much harder than to say some- 
thing fine about them which is not the exact truth. 

Adam Bede, Ch. 17 

APRIL TENTH 

He had borrowed from the terrible usurer False- 
hood, and the loan had mounted and mounted with 
the years, till he belonged to the usurer, body and 
soul. 

Romola, Ch. 39 

APRIL ELEVENTH 

The man who has failed in the use of some in- 
directness, is helped very little by the fact that his 
rivals are men to whom that indirectness is a some- 



thing human, very far from being alien. There 
remains this grand distinction, that he has failed, 
and that the jet of light is thrown entirely on his 
misdoings. 

Fdix Holt, Ch. 34 

APRIL TWELFTH 

Many feel themselves very confidently on safe 
ground when they say: It must be good for man to 
know the Truth. But it is clearly not good for a 
particular man to know some particular truth, as 
irremediable treachery in one whom he cherishes — 
better that he should die without knowing it. 

Of scientific truth, is it not conceivable that some 
facts as to the tendency of things affecting the final 
destination of the race might be more hurtful when 
they had entered into the human consciousness than 
they would have been if they had remained purely 
external in their activity? 

Leaves from a Note-Book 

APRIL THIRTEENTH 

The mother's love is at first an absorbing delight, 
blunting all other sensibilities; it is an expansion of 
the animal existence; it enlarges the imagined range 
for self to move in: but in after years it can only 
continue to be joy on the same terms as other long- 
lived love — that is, by much suppression of self, 
and power of living in the experience of another. 

Felix Holt, Ch. i 

APRIL FOURTEENTH 

If youth is the season of hope, it is often so only 
in the sense that our elders are hopeful about us; 

[301 



for no age is so apt as youth to think its emotions, 
partings, and resolves are the last of their kind. 
Each crisis seems final, simply because it is new. 
We are told that the oldest inhabitants in Peru do 
not cease to be agitated by the earthquakes, but 
they probably see beyond each shock, and reflect 
that there are plenty more to come. 

Middlemarch, Ch. 55 

APRIL FIFTEENTH 

Who has been quite free from egoistic escapes 
of the imagination picturing desirable consequences 
on his own future in the presence of another's mis- 
fortune, sorrow, or death? The expected promotion 
or legacy is the common type of a temptation which 
makes speech and even prayer a severe avoidance 
of the most insistent thoughts, and sometimes 
raises an inward shame, a self-distaste, that is worse 
than any other form of unpleasant companionship. 

Daniel Deronda, Ch. 58 

APRIL SIXTEENTH 

Excellence encourages one about life generally; 
it shows the spiritual wealth of the world. 

Daniel Deronda, Ch. 36 

APRIL SEVENTEENTH 

Enveloped in a common mist, we seem to walk 
in clearness ourselves, and behold only the mist 
that enshrouds others. 

Leaves from a Note-Book 

[31] 



APRIL EIGHTEENTH 

In a man under the immediate pressure of a great 
sorrow, we tolerate morbid exaggerations; we are 
prepared to see him turn away a weary eye from 
sunlight and flowers and sweet human faces, as if this 
rich and glorious life had no significance but as a 
preliminary of death; we do not criticise his views, 
we compassionate his feelings. . . . But when he 
becomes didactic, rather than complaining, — 
when he ceases to sing his sorrows, and begins to 
insist on his opinions, — when that distaste for life 
which we pity as a transient feeling, is thrust upon 
us as a theory, we become perfectly cool and critical, 
and are not in the least inclined to be indulgent 
to false views and selfish sentiments. 

Essays: Worldliness and Other-W orldliness 



APRIL NINETEENTH 

The sense of security more frequently springs 
from habit than from conviction, and for this reason 
it often subsists after such a change in the conditions 
as might have been expected to suggest alarm. The 
lapse of time during which a given event has not 
happened, is, in this logic of habit, constantly alleged 
as a reason why the event should never happen, 
even when the lapse of time is precisely the added 
condition which makes the event imminent. A 
man will tell you that he has worked in a mine for 
forty years, unhurt by an accident, as a reason why 
he should apprehend no danger, though the roof 
is beginning to sink; and it is often observable, that 

[32] 



the older a man gets, the more difficult it is to him 
to retain a believing conception of his own death. 

Silas Marner, Ch. 5 

APRIL TWENTIETH 

Indefinite visions of ambition are weak against 
the ease of doing what is habitual or beguilingly 
agreeable; and we all know the difficulty of carrying 
out a resolve when we secretly long that it may turn 
out to be unnecessary. In such states of mind the 
most incredulous person has a private leaning to- 
wards miracle: impossible to conceive how our 
wish could be fulfilled, still — very wonderful 
things have happened! 

Middlemarch, Ch. 60 

APRIL TWENTY-FIRST 

Few things hold the perceptions more thoroughly 
captive than anxiety about what we have got to say. 

Middlemarch, Ch. 51 

APRIL TWENTY-SECOND 

Prejudices, like odorous bodies, have a double 
existence both solid and subtle — solid as the 
pyramids, subtle as the twentieth echo of an echo, 
or as the memory of hyacinths which once scented 
the darkness. 

Middlemarch, Ch. 43 

APRIL TWENTY-THIRD 

It was certainly not her plainness that attracted 
them (and let all plain young ladies be warned 
against the dangerous encouragements given them 

I33] 



by Society to confide in their want of beauty). A 
human being in this aged nation of ours is a very 
wonderful whole, the slow creation of long inter- 
changing influences; and charm is a result of two 
such wholes, the one loving and the one loved. 

Middlemarch, Ch. 40 

APRIL TWENTY-FOURTH 

There are answers which, in turning away wrath, 
only send it to the other end of the room, and to 
have a discussion coolly waived when you feel that 
justice is all on your own side is even more exas- 
perating in marriage than in philosophy. 

Middlemarch, Ch. 29 

APRIL TWENTY-FIFTH 

The subtle and varied pains springing from the 
higher sensibility that accompanies higher culture, 
are perhaps less pitiable than that dreary absence 
of impersonal enjoyment and consolation which 
leaves ruder minds to the perpetual urgent compan- 
ionship of their own griefs and discontents. 

Silas Marner, Ch. 3 

APRIL TWENTY-SIXTH 

Among our valued friends is there not some one 
or other who is a little too self-confident and dis- 
dainful; whose distinguished mind is a little spotted 
with commonness; who is a little pinched here and 
protuberant there with native prejudices; or whose 
better energies are liable to lapse down the wrong 

[34] 



channel under the influence of transient solicita- 
tions? 

Middkmarch, Ch. 15 

APRIL TWENTY-SEVENTH 

We know what a masquerade all development 
is, and what effective shapes may be disguised in 
helpless embryos. In fact, the world is full of hope- 
ful analogies and handsome dubious eggs called 
possibilities. 

Middlemarch, Ch. 10 

APRIL TWENTY-EIGHTH 

Signs are small measurable things, but interpre- 
tations are illimitable, and in girls of sweet, ardent 
nature, every sign is apt to conjure up wonder, 
hope, belief, vast as a sky, and colored by a diffused 
thimbleful of matter in the shape of knowledge. 
They are not always too grossly deceived; for 
Sinbad himself may have fallen by good-luck on 
a true description, and wrong reasoning sometimes 
lands poor mortals in right conclusions: starting 
a long way off the true point, and proceeding by 
loops and zigzags, we now and then arrive just 
where we ought to be. 

Middlemarch, Ch. 3 

APRIL TWENTY-NINTH 

It belongs to every large nature, when it is not 
under the immediate power of some strong un- 
questioning emotion, to suspect itself, and doubt the 
truth of its own impressions, conscious of possibilities 
beyond its own horizon. 

Romola, Ch. 27 

[35I 



APRIL THIRTIETH 

''But surely that is a happiness to have so many 
tastes, — to enjoy so many beautiful things, when 
they are within your reach," said Maggie, musingly. 
"It always seemed to me a sort of clever stupidity 
only to have one sort of talent, — almost like a 
carrier-pigeon." 

The Mill on the Floss, Bk. V, Ch. 3 



36 



MAY FIRST 

THE wood I walk in on this mild May day, 
with the young yellow-brown foliage of the 
oaks between me and the blue sky, the white star- 
flowers and the blue-eyed speedwell and the ground 
ivy at my feet, what grove of tropic palms, what 
strange ferns or splendid broad-petalled blossoms, 
could ever thrill such deep and delicate fibres within 
me as this home scene? These familiar flowers, 
these well-remembered bird-notes, this sky, with 
its fitful brightness, these furrowed and grassy 
fields, each with a sort of personality given to it 
by the capricious hedgerows, — such things as these 
are the mother tongue of our imagination, the 
language that is laden with all the subtle, inextri- 
cable associations the fleeting hours of our child- 
hood left behind them. Our delight in the sunshine 
on the deep-bladed grass to-day might be no more 
than the faint perception of wearied souls, if it were 
not for the sunshine and the grass in the far-off 
years which still live in us, and transform our per- 
ception into love. 

The Mill on the Floss, Bk. I, Ch. 6 
MAY SECOND 

It seems to me beauty is part of the finished 
language by which goodness speaks. 

Romola, Ch. 19 

[37] 



MAY THIRD 

Our consciousness rarely registers the beginning 
of a growth within us any more than without us: 
there have been many circulations of the sap before 
we detect the smallest sign of the bud. 

Silas Marner, Ch. 7 

MAY FOURTH 

A human life should be well rooted in some spot 
of a native land, where it may get the love of tender 
kinship for the face of earth, for the labors men go 
forth to, for the sounds and accents that haunt it, 
for whatever will give that early home a familiar 
unmistakable difference amidst the future widening 
of knowledge: a spot where the definiteness of 
early memories may be inwrought with affection, 
and kindly acquaintance with all neighbors, even 
to the dogs and donkeys, may spread not by senti- 
mental effort and reflection, but as a sweet habit of 
the blood. At five years old, mortals are not pre- 
pared to be citizens of the world, to be stimulated 
by abstract nouns, to soar above preference into 
impartiality; and that prejudice in favor of milk 
with which we blindly begin, is a type of the way 
body and soul must get nourished at least for a 
time. The best introduction to astronomy is to 
think of the nightly heavens as a little lot of stars 
belonging to one's own homestead. 

Daniel Deronda, Ch. 3 

MAY FIFTH 

Always there is seed being sown silently and 
unseen, and everywhere there come sweet flowers 

[38] 



without our foresight or labor. We reap what we 
sow, but Nature has love over and above that justice, 
and gives us shadow and blossom and fruit that 
spring from no planting of ours. 

Janet's Repentance, Ch. 5 

MAY SIXTH 

"Ay, ay!" said Mrs. Poyser; "one 'ud think, an' 
hear some folks talk, as the men war 'cute enough 
to count the corns in a bag o' wheat wi' only smelling 
at it. They can see through a barn-door, they can. 
Perhaps that's the reason they can see so little o' 
this side on't." 

Adam Bede, Ch. 53 

MAY SEVENTH 

He was conscious of that peculiar irritation which 
will sometimes befall the man whom others are 
inclined to trust as a mentor — the irritation of 
perceiving that he is supposed to be entirely off the 
same plane of desire and temptation as those who 
confess to him. Our guides, we pretend, must be 
sinless: as if those were not often the best teachers 
who only yesterday got corrected for their mistakes. 

Daniel Deronda, Ch. 37 

MAY EIGHTH 

The temptations that most beset those who have 
great natural gifts, and are wise after the flesh, are 
pride and scorn, more particularly towards those 
weak things of the world which have been chosen 
to confound the things which are mighty. The 
scornful nostril and the high head gather not the 

I39] 



odors that lie on the track of truth. The mind 
that is too ready at contempt and reprobation is 
... as a clinched fist that can give blows, but is 
shut up from receiving and holding aught that is pre- 
cious — though it were heaven-sent manna. 

Felix Holt, Ch. s 

MAY NINTH 

Repent? Not I. Repentance is the weight 
Of undigested meals ta'en yesterday. 

The Spanish Gypsy, Bk. Ill 

MAY TENTH 

When immortal Bunyan makes his picture of 
the persecuting passions bringing in their verdict 
of guilty, who pities Faithful? That is a rare and 
blessed lot which some greatest men have not at- 
tained, to k^iow ourselves guiltless before a con- 
demning crowd — to be sure that what we are de- 
nounced for is solely the good in us. The pitiable lot 
is that of the man who could not call himself a 
martyr even though he were to persuade himself that 
the men who stoned him were but ugly passions in- 
carnate — who knows that he is stoned, not for 
professing the Right, but for not being the man he 
professed to be. 

Middlemarch, Ch. 85 

MAY ELEVENTH 

Some minds naturally rebel against whatever they 
were brought up in, and like the opposite: they see 
the faults in what is nearest to them. 

Daniel Deronda, Ch. 32 

[40] 



MAY TWELFTH 

What we call our despair is often only the painful 
eagerness of unfed hope. 

Middlemarch, Ch. 51 

MAY THIRTEENTH 

Even his proud outspokenness was checked by 
the discernment that it was as useless to fight 
against the interpretations of ignorance as to whip 
the fog. 

Middlemarch, Ch. 45 

MAY FOURTEENTH 

Results which depend on human conscience and 
intelligence work slowly. 

Middlemarch, Ch. 15 

MAY FIFTEENTH 

If we only look far enough off for the consequence 
of our actions, we can always find some point in 
the combination of results by which those actions 
can be justified; by adopting the point of view of 
a Providence who arranges results, or of a philosopher 
who traces them, we shall find it possible to obtain 
perfect complacency in choosing to do what is 
most agreeable to us in the present moment. 

The Mill on the Floss, Bk. V, Ch. 3 

MAY SIXTEENTH 

Let even an affectionate Goliath get himself 
tied to a small tender thing, dreading to hurt it by 
pulling, and dreading still more to snap the cord, 
and which of the two, pray, will be master? 

Silas Marner, Ch. 14 

I41] 



MAY SEVENTEENTH 

It is always our heaviest bore who is astonished 
at the tameness of modern celebrities: naturally; 
for a little of his company has reduced them to a 
state of flaccid fatigue. It is right and meet that 
there should be an abundant utterance of good 
sound commonplaces. Part of an agreeable talker's 
charm is that he lets them fall continually with no 
more than their due emphasis. Giving a pleasant 
voice to what we are all well assured of, makes a 
sort of wholesome air for more special and dubious 
remark to move in. 

Theophrastus Such, Ch. S 

MAY EIGHTEENTH 
O they are dullards, kick because they're stung, 
And bruise a friend to show they hate a wasp. 

The Spanish Gypsy, Bk. I 

MAY NINETEENTH 
Those who trust us educate us. 

Daniel Deronda, Ch. 35 

There are natures in which, if they love us, we 
are conscious of having a sort of baptism and con- 
secration : they bind us over to rectitude and purity 
by their pure belief about us; and our sins become 
that worst kind of sacrilege which tears down the 
invisible altar of trust. *'If you are not good, none 
is good" — those little words may give a terrific 
meaning to responsibility, may hold a vitriolic 
intensity for remorse. 

Middlemarch, Ch. 77 

[42] 



MAY TWENTIETH 

When a woman feels purely and nobly, that 
ardor of hers which breaks through formulas too 
rigorously urged on men by daily practical needs, 
makes one of her most precious influences: she is 
the added impulse that shatters the stiffening 
crust of cautious experience. Her inspired igno- 
rance gives a subHmity to actions so incongruously 
simple, that otherwise they would make men smile. 

Felix Holt, Ch. 46 

MAY TWENTY-FIRST 

Perhaps poetry and romance are as plentiful as 
ever in the world except for those phlegmatic 
natures who I suspect would in any age have re- 
garded them as a dull form of erroneous thinking. 
They exist very easily in the same room with the 
microscope and even in railway carriages: what 
banishes them is the vacuum in gentlemen and 
lady passengers. How should all the apparatus 
of heaven and earth, from the farthest firmament 
to the tender bosom of the mother who nourished 
us, make poetry for a mind that has no movements 
of awe and tenderness, no sense of fellowship which 
thrills from the near to the distant, and back again 
from the distant to the near? 

Daniel Deronda, Ch. ig 

MAY TWENTY-SECOND 

A woman dictates before marriage in order that 
she may have an appetite for submission afterwards. 
And certainly, the mistakes that we male and female 

[43] 



mortals make when we have our own way might 
fairly raise some wonder that we are so fond of it. 

Middlemarch, Ch. 9 

MAY TWENTY-THIRD 

He had "been the making of Johnson;" and this 
seems to many men a reason for expecting devotion, 
in spite of the fact that they themselves, though 
very fond of their own persons and lives^ are not at 
all devoted to the Maker they believe in. 
•,, Felix Holt, Ch. 29 

MAY TWENTY-FOURTH 

The disappointment of a youthful passion has 
effects as incalculable as those of small-pox, which 
may make one person plain and a genius, another 
less plain and more foolish, another plain without 
detriment to his folly, and leave perhaps the major- 
ity without obvious change. Everything depends — 
not on the mere fact of disappointment, but — on 
the nature affected and the force that stirs it. 

Datiiel Deronda, Ch. 58 

MAY TWENTY-FIFTH 

Of course people need not be always talking well. 
Only one tells the quality of their minds when they 
try to talk well. 

Middlemarch, Ch. 4 

MAY TWENTY-SIXTH 

In fact, very little peacock was eaten; but there 
was the satisfaction of sitting at a table where 
peacock was served up in a remarkable manner, 

[44] 



and of knowing that such caprices were not within 
reach of any but those who supped with the very 
wealthiest men. 

Romola, Ch. 39 

MAY TWENTY-SEVENTH 

Human beings in moments of passionate reproach 
and denunciation, especially when their anger is 
on their own account, are never so wholly in the 
right that the person who has to wince cannot 
possibly protest against some unreasonableness or 
unfairness in their outburst. 

Felix Holt, Ch. 42 

MAY TWENTY-EIGHTH 

When a poet floats in the empyrean, and only 
takes a bird's-eye view of the earth, some people 
accept the mere fact of his so^.ring for sublimity, 
and mistake his dim vision of earth for proximity to 
heaven. 

Essays: Worldliness and Other-W orldliness 

MAY TWENTY-NINTH 

What we call illusions are often, in truth, a wider 
vision of past and present realities — a willing 
movement of a man's soul with the larger sweep 
of the world's forces — a movement towards a more 
assured end than the chances of a single life. We 
see human heroism broken into units and say, this 
unit did little — might as well not have been. But 
in this way we might break up a great army into 
units; in this way we might break the sunlight into 
fragments, and think that this and the other might 

[45] 



be cheaply parted with. Let us rather raise a monu- 
ment to the soldiers whose brave hearts only kept 
the ranks unbroken, and met death — a monument 
to the faithful who were not famous, and who are 
precious as the continuity of the sunbeams is precious, 
though some of them fall unseen and on barrenness. 

Felix Holt, Ch. i6 

MAY THIRTIETH 

Our dead are never dead to us until we have 
forgotten them: they can be injured by us, they can 
be wounded; they know all our penitence, all our 
aching sense that their place is empty, all the 
kisses we bestow on the smallest relic of their 
presence. 

Adam Bede 

MAY THIRTY-FIRST 

It is a sad weakness in us, after all, that the 
thought of a man's death hallows him anew to us; 
as if Hfe were not sacred too — as if it were com- 
paratively a light thing to fail in love and reverence 
to the brother who has to climb the whole toilsome 
steep with us, and all our tears and tenderness 
were due to the one who is spared that hard journey. 

Janet's Repentance, Ch. ii 



46 



9!une 



JUNE FIRST 

IT never will rain roses: when we want 
To have more roses we must plant more trees. 
The Spanish Gypsy, Bk. Ill 

JUNE SECOND 

A woman's lot is made for her by the love she 
accepts. 

Felix Holt, Ch. 43 

JUNE THIRD 

Men outlive their love, but they don't outlive 
the consequences of their recklessness. 

Middlemarch, Ch. 52 

JUNE FOURTH 

Love does not aim simply at the conscious good 
of the beloved object: it is not satisfied without per- 
fect loyalty of heart; it aims at its own completeness. 

Romola, Ch. 28 

JUNE FIFTH 

It is hard to believe long together that anything 
is "worth while" unless there is some eye to kindle 
in common with our own, some brief word uttered 
now and then to imply that what is infinitely 
precious to us is precious alike to another mind. 

Letter to Madame Bodichon 

[47I 



JUNE SIXTH 

Perfect love has a breath of poetry which can 
exalt the relations of the least-instructed human 
beings. 

Silas Marner, Ch. i6 

JUNE SEVENTH 

To think of the part one little woman can play 
in the life of a man, so that to renounce her may be 
a very good imitation of heroism, and to win her 
may be discipline! 

Middlemarch, Ch. 66 

JUNE EIGHTH 

But is it what we love, or how we love, 
That makes true good? 

The Spanish Gypsy, Bk. I 

JUNE NINTH 

Faithfulness and constancy mean something else 
besides doing what is easiest and pleasantest to our- 
selves. They mean renouncing whatever is opposed 
to the reliance others have in us, — whatever would 
cause misery to those whom the course of our lives 
has made dependent on us. 

The Mill on the Floss, Bk. VI, Ch. 14 

JUNE TENTH 

A supreme love, a motive that gives a sublime 
rhythm to a woman's life, and exalts habit into 
partnership with the soul's highest needs, is not 
to be had where and how she wills: to know that 
high initiation, she must often tread where it is 

[48] 



hard to tread, and feel the chill air, and watch 
through darkness. It is not true that love makes 
all things easy : it makes us choose what is difficult. 

Felix Holt, Ch. 49 

JUNE ELEVENTH 

The impulse to confession almost always requires 
the presence of a fresh ear and a fresh heart; and in 
our moments of spiritual need, the man to whom 
we have no tie but our common nature, seems 
nearer to us than mother, brother, or friend. Our 
daily familiar life is but a hiding of ourselves from 
each other behind a screen of trivial words and deeds, 
and those who sit with us at the same hearth are 
often the farthest off from the deep human soul 
within us, full of unspoken evil and unacted good. 

Janet's Repentance, Ch. 16 

JUNE TWELFTH 

It is easy to say how we love new friends, and 
what we owe them, but words can never trace out 
all the fibres that knk us to the old^ 

Journal 

JUNE THIRTEENTH 

Every limit is a beginning as well as an ending. 
Who can quit young lives after being long in com- 
pany with them, and not desire to know what befell 
them in their after-years? For the fragment of a 
life, however typical, is not the sample of an even 
web: promises may not be kept, and an ardent 
outset may be followed by declension; latent powers 

[49] 



may find their long- waited opportunity; a past 
error may urge a grand retrieval. 

Marriage, which has been the bourn of so many 
narratives, is still a great beginning, as it was to 
Adam and Eve, who kept their honeymoon in Eden, 
but had their first little one among the thorns and 
thistles of the wilderness. It is still the beginning 
of the home epic — the gradual conquest or irre- 
mediable loss of that complete union which makes 
the advancing years a climax, and age the harvest 
of sweet memories in common. 

Middlemarch, Finale 

JUNE FOURTEENTH 

It is with men as with trees: if you lop off their 
finest branches, into which they were pouring their 
life-juice, the wounds will be healed over with some 
rough boss, some odd excrescence; and what might 
have been a grand tree expanding into liberal shade, 
is but a whimsical misshapen trunk. Many an 
irritating fault, many an unlovely oddity, has come 
of a hard sorrow, which has crushed and maimed 
the nature just when it was expanding into plen- 
teous beauty; and the trivial erring life which we 
visit with our harsh blame, may be but as the un- 
steady motion of a man whose best limb is withered. 
Mr. GilfiVs Love-Story^ Epilogue 

JUNE FIFTEENTH 

Whenever affection can spring, it is like the green 
leaf and the blossom — pure, and breathing purity, 
whatever soil it may grow in. 

Romola, Ch. 50 

. [50] 



JUNE SIXTEENTH 

We get our knowledge of perfect Love by glimpses 
and in fragments chiefly — the rarest only among 
us knowing what it is to worship and caress, rever- 
ence and cherish, divide our bread and mingle our 
thoughts at one and the same time, under inspira- 
tion of the same object. Finest aromas will so 
often leave the fruits to which they are native and 
cling elsewhere, leaving the fruit empty of all but 
its coarser structure ! 

Leaves from a Note-Book 

JUNE SEVENTEENTH 

Thousands of men have wedded poverty because 
they expect to go to heaven for it; I don't expect 
to go to heaven for it, but I wed it because it enables 
me to do what I most want to do on earth. What- 
ever the hopes for the world may be — whether 
great or small — I am a man of this generation; 
I will try to make life less bitter for a few within my 
reach. It is held reasonable enough to toil for the 
fortunes of a family, though it may turn to imbe- 
cility in the third generation. I choose a family 
with more chances in it. 

Felix Holt, Ch. 27 

JUNE EIGHTEENTH 

No one who has ever known what it is thus to 
lose faith in a fellow-man whom he has profoundly 
loved and reverenced, will lightly say that the 
shock can leave the faith in the Invisible Goodness 
unshaken. With the sinking of high human trust, 
the dignity of life sinks too; we cease to believe in 

[51] 



our own better self, since that also is part of the 
common nature which is degraded in our thought; 
and all the finer impulses of the soul are dulled. 

Romola, Ch. 6i 

JUNE NINETEENTH 

"Stop, stop, mother," Felix burst in; "pray 
don't use that limping argument again — that a 
man should marry because he's fond of children. 
That's a reason for not marrying. A bachelor's 
children are always young: they're immortal chil- 
dren — always Hsping, waddling, helpless, and with a 
chance of turning out good." 

Felix Holt, Ch. 22 

JUNE TWENTIETH 

In the ages since Adam's marriage, it has been 
good for some men to be alone, and for some women 
also. 

Fdix Holt, Ch. 44 

JUNE TWENTY-FIRST 

"Oh, I know," said Priscilla, "I know the way 
o' wives; they set one on to abuse their husbands, 
and then they turn round on one and praise 'em 
as if they wanted to sell 'em." 

Silas Marner, Ch. 17 

JUNE TWENTY-SECOND 

If you have any reason for not indulging a wish 
to speak to a fair woman, it is a bad plan to look 
long at her back: the wish to see what it screens 
becomes the stronger. There may be a very sweet 
smile on the other side. 

Daniel Deronda, Ch. 35 

[52] 



JUNE TWENTY-THIRD 

When a man has seen the woman whom he would 
have chosen if he had intended to marry speedily, 
his remaining a bachelor will usually depend on her 
resolution rather than on his. 

Middlemarch, Ch. ii 

JUNE TWENTY-FOURTH 

To delight in doing things because our fathers 
did them is good if it shuts out nothing better; it 
enlarges the range of affection — and affection is 
the broadest basis of good in Ufe. 

Daniel Deronda, Ch. 35 

JUNE TWENTY-FIFTH 

It ought to lie with a man's self that he is a 
gentleman. 

Middlemarch, Ch. 6i 

JUNE TWENTY-SIXTH 

Vanity is as ill at ease under indifference as 
tenderness is under a love which it cannot return. 

Daniel Deronda, Ch. 10 

JUNE TWENTY-SEVENTH 

Shallow natures dream of an easy sway over the 
emotions of others, trusting implicitly in their own 
petty magic to turn the deepest streams, and con- 
fident, by pretty gestures and remarks, of making 
the thing that is not as though it were. 

Middlemarch, Ch. 78 
JUNE TWENTY-EIGHTH 

Ah, mind is an enemy to beauty! I myself was 
thought beautiful by the women at one time — 

[53] 



when I was in my swaddling-bands. But now — 
oime! I carry my unwritten poems in cipher on my 
face! 

Romola, Ch. 45 

JUNE TWENTY-NINTH 

Plainness has its peculiar temptations and vices 
quite as much as beauty; it is apt either to feign 
amiability, or, not feigning it, to show all the re- 
pulsiveness of discontent: at any rate, to be called 
an ugly thing in contrast with that lovely creature 
your companion, is apt to produce some effect be- 
yond a sense of fine veracity and fitness in the 
phrase. 

Middlemarchf Ch. 12 

JUNE THIRTIETH 

I wonder whether the subtle measuring of forces 
will ever come to measuring the force there would 
be in one beautiful woman whose mind was as noble 
as her face was beautiful — who made a man's 
passion for her rush in one current with all the 
great aims of his life. 

Felix Holt, Ch. 27 



[54] 



JULY FIRST 

PERHAPS there is no time in a summer's day 
more cheering than when the warmth of the sun 
is just beginning to triumph over the freshness of 
the morning — when there is just a Hngering hint 
of early coolness to keep off languor under the de- 
licious influence of warmth. 

Adam Bede, Ch. ig 

JULY SECOND 

There comes a terrible moment to many souls 
when the great movements of the world, the larger 
destinies of mankind, which have lain aloof in news- 
papers and other neglected reading, enter like an 
earthquake into their own lives — when the slow 
urgency of growing generations turns into the tread 
of an invading army or the dire clash of civil war, 
and gray fathers know nothing to seek for but the 
corpses of their blooming sons, and girls forget all 
vanity to make lint and bandages which may serve 
for the shattered limbs of their betrothed husbands. 
Then it is as if the Invisible Power that has been 
the object of lip-worship and lip-resignation became 
visible, according to the imagery of the Hebrew 
poet, making the flames his chariot, and riding on 
the wings of the wind, till the mountains smoke and 
the plains shudder under the rolling fiery visitation. 

[55] 



Often the good cause seems to lie prostrate under 
the thunder of unrelenting force, the martyrs live 
reviled, they die, and no angel is seen holding forth 
the crown and the palm branch. Then it is that 
the submission of the soul to the Highest is tested, 
and even in the eyes of frivolity life looks out from 
the scene of human struggle with the awful face 
of duty, and a religion shows itself which is something 
else than a private consolation. 

Daniel Deronda, Ch. 7 

JULY THIRD 

The cause of freedom, which is the cause of God's 
kingdom upon earth, is often most injured by the 
enemies who carry within them the power of certain 
human virtues. The wickedest man is often not 
the most insurmountable obstacle to the triumph 
of good. 

Romola, Ch. 59 

JULY FOURTH 

Even our failures are a prophecy. 
Even our yearnings and our bitter tears 
After that fair and true we cannot grasp; 
As patriots who seem to die in vain 
Make liberty more sacred by their pangs. 

A Minor Prophet 
JULY FIFTH 

After all the talk of scholars, there are but two 
sorts of government: one where men show their 
teeth at each other, and one where men show their 
tongues and lick the feet of the strongest. 

Romola, Ch. 39 

[56] 



JULY SIXTH 

The very truth hath a color from the disposition 
of the utterer. 

Felix Holt, Ch. 44 

JULY SEVENTH 

A man may be puffed and belauded, envied, 
ridiculed, counted upon as a tool and fallen in love 
with, or at least selected as a future husband, and 
yet remain virtually unknown — known merely 
as a cluster of signs for his neighbors' false supposi- 
tions. 

Middlemarch, Ch. 15 

JULY EIGHTH 

In many of our neighbors' lives, there is much 
not only of error and lapse, but of a certain exquisite 
goodness which can never be written or even spoken 
— only divined by each of us, according to the 
inward instruction of our own privacy. 

Daniel Deronda, Ch. 16 

JULY NINTH 

This world is not a very fine place for a good 
many of the people in it. But I've made up my 
mind it shan't be the worse for me, if I can help it. 
They may tell me I can't alter the world — that 
there must be a certain number of sneaks and 
robbers in it, and if I don't He and filch somebody 
else will. Well, then, somebody else shall, for I 
won't. 

Felix Holt, Ch. $ 

[57] 



JULY TENTH 

Our words have wings, but fly not where we 
would. 

The Spanish Gypsy, Bk. Ill 

JULY ELEVENTH 

I believe that people are almost always better 
than their neighbors think they are. 

Middlemarch, Ch. 72 

JULY TWELFTH 

Personal feeling is not always in the wrong if you 
boil it down to the impressions which make it 
simply an opinion. 

Middlemarch, Ch. 45 

JULY THIRTEENTH 

See to it, friend, before you pronounce a too 
hasty judgment, that your own moral sensibilities 
are not of a hoofed or clawed character. The 
keenest eye will not serve, unless you have the 
delicate fingers, with their subtle nerve-filaments, 
which elude scientific lenses, and lose themselves 
in the invisible world of human sensation. 

Janet's Repentance, Ch. 11 

JULY FOURTEENTH 

That talkative maiden. Rumor, though in the 
interest of art she is figured as a youthful winged 
beauty with flowing garments, soaring above the 
heads of men, and breathing world- thrilling news 
through a gracefully curved trumpet, is in fact a 
very old maid, who puckers her silly face by the 

[58] 



fireside, and really does no more than chirp a wrong 
guess or a lame story into the ear of a fellow-gossip; 
all the rest of the work attributed to her is done 
by the ordinary working of those passions against 
which men pray in the Litany, with the help of a 
plentiful stupidity against which we have never 
yet had any authorized form of prayer. 

Felix Holt, Ch. 8 

JULY FIFTEENTH 

"People will talk," he said. ''Even if a man has 
been acquitted by a jury, they'll talk, and nod and 
wink — and as far as the world goes, a man might 
often as well be guilty as not." 

Middletnarch) Ch. 74 

JULY SIXTEENTH 

What we call the "just possible" is sometimes 
true and the thing we find it easier to believe is 
grossly false. 

Middlemarch, Ch. 73 

JULY SEVENTEENTH 

News is often dispersed as thoughtlessly and 
effectively as that pollen which the bees carry off 
(having no idea how powdery they are) when they 
are buzzing in search of their particular nectar. 

Middlemarch, Ch. 59 

JULY EIGHTEENTH 

Gossip is a sort of smoke that comes from the 
dirty tobacco-pipes of those who diffuse it: it proves 
nothing but the bad taste of the smoker. 

Daniel Deronda, Ch. 13 

[59] 



JULY NINETEENTH 

We are rather apt to consider an act wrong be- 
cause it is unpleasant to us. 

Middlemarch, Ch. 84 

JULY TWENTIETH 

Don't let us rejoice in punishment, even when the 
hand of God alone inflicts it. The best of us are but 
poor wretches just saved from shipwreck: can we 
feel anything but awe and pity when we see a 
fellow-passenger swallowed by the waves? 

Janet's Repentance, Ch. 22 

JULY TWENTY-FIRST 

Retribution may come from any voice; the 
hardest, crudest, most imbruted urchin at the 
street-corner can inflict it; surely help and pity are 
rarer things, more needful for the righteous to be- 
stow. 

The Mill on the Floss, Bk. VII, Ch. 2 

JULY TWENTY-SECOND 

There is no killing the suspicion that deceit has 
once begotten. 

Romola, Ch. 58 

JULY TWENTY-THIRD 

In this stupid world most people never consider 
that a thing is good to be done unless it is done by 
their own set. 

Middlemarch, Ch. 44 

[60] 



JULY TWENTY-FOURTH 

Heaven knows what would become of our sociality 
if we never visited people we speak ill of: we should 
live, like Egyptian hermits, in crowded solitude. 

Janet's Repentance^ Ch. 25 

JULY TWENTY-FIFTH 

Well, madam, put a good face on it, and don't 
seem to be on the lookout for crows, else you'll 
set other people watching. 

Felix Holt, Ch. i 

JULY TWENTY-SIXTH 

The prevarication and white lies which a mind 
that keeps itself ambitiously pure is as uneasy under 
as a great artist under the false touches that no eye 
detects but his own, are worn as lightly as mere 
trimmings when once the actions have become a lie. 

Silas Marner, Ch. is 

JULY TWENTY-SEVENTH 

Unhappily the habit of being offensive "without 
meaning it" leads usually to a way of making amends 
which the injured person cannot but regard as a 
being amiable without meaning it. The kindness, the 
complimentary indications or assurances, are apt 
to appear in the light of a penance adjusted to the 
foregoing lapses, and by the very contrast they offer 
call up a keener memory of the wrong they atone 
for. They are not a spontaneous prompting of 
good-will, but an elaborate compensation. 

Theophrastus Such, Ch. 6 

[61I 



JULY TWENTY-EIGHTH 

Our thoughts are often worse than we are, just 
as they are often better than we are. And God 
sees us as we are altogether, not in separate feeUngs 
or actions, as our fellow-men see us. We are always 
doing each other injustice, and thinking better or 
worse of each other than we deserve, because we 
only hear and see separate words and actions. We 
don't see each other's whole nature. . 

Mr. GilfiVs Love-Story, Ch. 19 

JULY TWENTY-NINTH 

Truth is oft 
Scattered in fragments round a stately pile 
Built half of error; and the eye's defect 
May breed too much denial. 

The Spanish Gypsy, Bk. II 

JULY THIRTIETH 

Even the flowers and the pure sunshine and the 
sweet waters of Paradise would have been spoiled 
for a young heart, if the bowered walks had been 
haunted by an Eve gone gray with bitter memories 
of an Adam who had complained, ''The woman . . . 
she gave me of the tree, and I did eat." And many 
of us know how, even in our childhood, some blank 
discontented face on the background of our home, 
has marred our summer mornings. Why was it, 
when the birds were singing, when the fields were 
a garden, and when we were clasping another little 
hand just larger than our own, there was somebody 
who found it hard to smile? 

Felix Holt, Ch. 49 
[62! 



JULY THIRTY-FIRST 

There is nothing more widely misleading than 
sagacity if it happens to get on a wrong scent; 
and sagacity, persuaded that men usually act and 
speak from distinct motives, with a consciously 
proposed end in view, is certain to waste its energies 
on imaginary game. Plotting covetousness and de- 
liberate contrivance, in order to compass a selfish 
end, are nowhere abundant but in the world of the 
dramatist: they demand too intense a mental action 
for many of our fellow-parishioners to be guilty 
of them. It is easy enough to spoil the lives of our 
neighbors without taking so much trouble; we can 
do it by lazy acquiescence and lazy omission, by 
trivial falsities for which we hardly know a reason, 
by small frauds neutralized by small extravagances, 
by maladroit flatteries, and clumsily improvised 
insinuations. We live from hand to mouth, most 
of us, with a small family of immediate desires; 
we do little else than snatch a morsel to satisfy the 
hungry brood, rarely thinking of seed-corn or the 
next year's crop. 

The Mill on the Floss, Bk. I, Ch. 3 



63 



AUGUST FIRST 

WHAT scene was ever commonplace in the de- 
scending sunlight, when color has awakened 
from its noonday sleep, and the long shadows awe 
us like a disclosed presence? Above all, what scene 
is commonplace to the eye that is filled with serene 
gladness, and brightens all things with its own joy? 

Janet's Repentance, Ch. 26 
AUGUST SECOND 

It's the flesh and blood folks are made on as 
makes the difference. Some cheeses are made 
o' skimmed milk and some o' new milk, and it's no 
matter what you call 'em, you may tell which is 
which by the look and the smell. 

Adam Bede, Ch. 8 
AUGUST THIRD 

Perhaps the most delightful friendships are those 
in which there is much agreement, much disputation, 
and yet more personal liking. 

Felix Holt, Ch. 10 
AUGUST FOURTH 

There's enormous patience wanted with the way 
of the world. But it is easier for a man to wait 
patiently when he has friends who love him, and 
ask for nothing better than to help him through, 
so far as it lies in their power. 

Middlemarch, Ch. 63 

[65] 



AUGUST FIFTH 

The troublesome ones in a family are usually 
either the wits or the idiots. 

Middlemarch, Ch. 32 

AUGUST SIXTH 

Oh, there's pleasure in knowing one's not a fool, 
like half the people one sees about. And managing 
one's husband is some pleasure; and doing all one's 
business well. Why, if I've only got some orange 
flowers to candy, I shouldn't like to die till I see 
them all right. Then there's the sunshine now and 
then; I like that as the cats do. I look upon it, life 
is like our game at whist, when Banks and his wife 
come to the still-room of an evening. I don't enjoy 
the game much, but I like to play my cards well, 
and see what will be the end of it. 

Felix Holt, Ch. 1 

AUGUST SEVENTH 

It is a little too trying to human flesh to be 
conscious of expressing one's self better than others 
and never to have it noticed, and in the general 
dearth of admiration for the right thing, even a 
chance bray of applause falling exactly in time is 
rather fortifying. 

Middlemarch, Ch. 46 

AUGUST EIGHTH 

Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot 
out the glory of the world, and leave only a margin 
by which we see the blot? I know no speck so 
troublesome as self. 

Middlemarch, Ch. 42 
[661 



AUGUST NINTH 

What honor has a man with double bonds? 

Honor is shifting as the shadows are 

To souls that turn their passions into laws. 

The Spanish Gypsy, Bk. I 

AUGUST TENTH 

A full-fed fountain will be generous with its waters 
even in the rain, when they are worse than useless; 
and a fine fount of admonition is apt to be equally 
irrepressible. 

Middlemarch, Ch. 13 

AUGUST ELEVENTH 

To have a mind well oiled with that sort of argu- 
ment which prevents any claim from grasping it, 
seems eminently convenient sometimes; only the 
oil becomes objectionable when we find it anointing 
other minds on which we want to establish a hold. 

Romola, Ch. 63 

AUGUST TWELFTH 

A widow at fifty-five whose satisfaction has been 
largely drawn from what she thinks of her own 
person, and what she believes others think of it, 
requires a great fund of imagination to keep her 
spirits buoyant. 

Romola, Ch. 51 

AUGUST THIRTEENTH 

"Yes," said Maggie. *'It is with me as I used 
to think it would be with the poor uneasy white 
bear I saw at the show. I thought he must have 
got so stupid with the habit of turning backwards 

[67] 



and forwards in that narrow space, that he would 
keep doing it if they set him free. One gets a bad 
habit of being unhappy." 

The Mill on the Floss, Bk. VI, Ch. 2 

AUGUST FOURTEENTH 

The destructive spirit tends towards completeness; 
and any object once maimed or otherwise injured, 
is as readily doomed by unreasoning men as by 
unreasoning boys. 

Fdix Holt, Ch. 33 

AUGUST FIFTEENTH 

I would change with nobody, madam. And if 
troubles were put up to market, I'd sooner buy old 
than new. It's something to have seen the worst. 

Felix Holt, Ch. 39 
AUGUST SIXTEENTH 

To judge wisely I suppose we must know how 
things appear to the unwise; that kind of appearance 
making the larger part of the world's history. 

Daniel Deronda, Ch. 29 

AUGUST SEVENTEENTH 

The pond said to the ocean, "Why do you rage so? 
The wind is not so very violent — nay, it is already 
fallen. Look at me. I rose into no foaming waves, 
and am already smooth again." 

Leaves from a Note-Book 

AUGUST EIGHTEENTH 

What we see exclusively we are apt to see with 
some mistake of proportions. 

Daniel Deronda, Ch. 44 

[681 



AUGUST NINETEENTH 

There had sprung up in him a meditative yearning 
after wide knowledge which is likely always to 
abate ardor in the fight for prize acquirement in 
narrow tracts. Happily he was modest, and took 
any second-rateness in himself simply as a fact, not 
as a marvel necessarily to be accounted for by a 
superiority. 

Daniel Deronda, Ch. i6 

AUGUST TWENTIETH 

There is no short cut, no patent tram-road, to 
wisdom: after all the centuries of invention, the 
soul's path lies through the thorny wilderness which 
must be still trodden in solitude, with bleeding feet, 
with sobs for help, as it was trodden by them of old 
time. 

The Lifted Veil, Ch. i 

AUGUST TWENTY-FIRST 

There are episodes in most men's lives in which 
their highest qualities can only cast a deterring 
shadow over the objects that fill their inward 
vision. . . . Only those who know the supremacy 
of the intellectual life — the life which has a seed 
of ennobling thought and purpose within it — can 
understand the grief of one who falls from that 
serene activity into the absorbing soul-wasting 
struggle with worldly annoyances. 

Middlemarch, Ch. 73 
AUGUST TWENTY-SECOND 

The common people are not quite so stupid as 
you imagine. The commonest man, who has his 

[69I 



ounce of sense and feeling, is conscious of the differ- 
ence between a lovely, delicate woman, and a coarse 
one. Even a dog feels a difference in their presence. 
The man may be no better able than the dog to 
explain the influence the more refined beauty has 
on him, but he feels it. 

Adam Bede, Ch. 25 

AUGUST TWENTY-THIRD 

I cleave 
To nature's blunders, evanescent types 
Which sages banish from Utopia. 
"Not worship beauty?" say you. Patience, friend! 
I worship in the temple with the rest; 
But by my hearth I keep a sacred nook 
For gnomes and dwarfs, duck-footed waddling elves 
Who stitched and hammered for the weary man 
In days of old. 

A Minor Prophet 

AUGUST TWENTY-FOURTH 

Life's a vast sea 
That does its mighty errand without fail, 
Panting in unchanged strength though waves are 
changing. 

The Spanish Gypsy, Bk. Ill 

AUGUST TWENTY-FIFTH 

He had the energetic will and muscle, the self- 
confidence, the quick perception, and the narrow 
imagination which make what is admiringly called 
the practical mind. 

Fdix Holt, Ch. 8 
[70] 



AUGUST TWENTY-SIXTH 

I have known persons who have been suspected 
of undervaluing gratitude, and excluding it from 
the list of virtues; but on closer observation it has 
been seen that, if they have never felt grateful, it 
has been for want of an opportunity; and that, far 
from despising gratitude, they regard it as the virtue 
most of all incumbent — on others towards them. 

Felix Holt, Ch. 17 

AUGUST TWENTY-SEVENTH 

The same substance, we know, will exhibit differ- 
ent qualities under different tests; and, after all, 
imperfect reports of individual impressions, whether 
immediate or traditional, are a very frail basis on 
which to build our opinion of a man. One's character 
may be very indifferently mirrored in the mind of 
the most intimate neighbor; it all depends on the 
quality of that gentleman's reflecting surface. 

Essays: Worldliness and Other-W orldiness 

AUGUST TWENTY-EIGHTH 

The general conviction that we are admirable 
does not easily give way before a single negative; 
rather when any of Vanity's large family, male or 
female, find their performance received coldly, they 
are apt to believe that a little more of it will win 
over the unaccountable dissident. 

Daniel Deronda, Ch. i 

AUGUST TWENTY-NINTH 
Ignorance gives one a large range of probabilities. 

Daniel Deronda, Ch. 13 

[71] 



AUGUST THIRTIETH 

*'It drives me past patience," said Priscilla, im- 
petuously, " that way o' the men — always wanting 
and wanting, and never easy with what they've 
got: they can't sit comfortable in their chairs when 
they've neither ache nor pain, but either they must 
stick a pipe in their mouths, to make 'em better 
than well, or else they must be swallowing something 
strong, though they're forced to make haste before 
the next meal comes in." 

Silas Marner, Ch. 17 

AUGUST THIRTY-FIRST 

Favorable Chance is the god of all men who follow 
their own devices instead of obeying a law they 
believe in. Let even a polished man of these days 
get into a position he is ashamed to avow, and his 
mind will be bent on all the possible issues that may 
deliver him from the calculable results of that posi- 
tion. Let him live outside his income, or shirk the 
resolute honest work that brings wages, and he 
will presently find himself dreaming of a possible 
benefactor, a possible simpleton who may be cajoled 
into using his interest, a possible state of mind in 
some possible person not yet forthcoming. Let 
him neglect the responsibilities of his office, and he 
will inevitably anchor himself on the chance that 
the thing left undone may turn out not to be of the 
supposed importance. Let him betray his friend's 
confidence, and he will adore that same cunning 
complexity called Chance, which gives him the hope 
that his friend will never know. Let him forsake 

[72] 



a decent craft that he may pursue the gentilities 
of a profession to which nature never called him, 
and his religion will infallibly be the worship of 
blessed Chance, which he will believe in as the 
mighty creator of success. The evil principle dep- 
recated in that religion, is the orderly sequence 
by which the seed brings forth a crop after its kind. 

Silas Marner, Ch. g 



73 1 



^eptemtier 



SEPTEMBER FIRST 

ALL beauteous existence rests, yet wakes, 
Lies still, yet conscious, with clear open eyes 
And gentle breath and mild suffused joy. 
'Tis day, but day that falls like melody 
Repeated on a string with graver tones — 
Tones such as linger in a long farewell. 

The Spanish Gypsy, Bk. I 
SEPTEMBER SECOND 

A wise man, more than two thousand years ago, 
when he was asked what would most tend to lessen 
injustice in the world, said, "That every bystander 
should feel as indignant at a wrong as if he himself 
were the sufferer." Let us cherish such indignation. 
But the long-growing evils of a great nation are a 
tangled business, asking for a good deal more than 
indignation in order to be got rid of. Indignation 
is a fine war-horse, but the war-horse must be ridden 
by a man: it must be ridden by rationality, skill, 
courage, armed with the right weapons, and taking 
definite aim. 

Essays: Address to Working Men by Felix Holt 

SEPTEMBER THIRD 

"I'll tell you what's the greatest power under 
heaven," said Felix, "and that is public opinion — 
the ruling belief in society about what is right and 

[7Sl 



what is wrong, what is honorable and what is shame- 
ful. That's the steam that is to work the engines. 
How can poHtical freedom make us better, any- 
more than a religion we don't believe in, if people 
laugh and wink when they see men abuse and defile 
it? And while pubjic opinion is what it is — while 
men have no better beliefs about public duty — while 
corruption is not felt to be a damning disgrace — 
while men are not ashamed in Parliament and out 
of it to make public questions which concern the 
welfare of millions a mere screen for their own petty 
private ends, — I say, no fresh scheme of voting 
will much mend our condition.'* 

Felix Holt, Ch. 30 

SEPTEMBER FOURTH 

It is all pretence to say that there is no such thing 
as Class Interest. It is clear that if any particular 
number of men get a particular benefit from any 
existing institution, they are likely to band together, 
in order to keep up that benefit and increase it, 
until it is perceived to be unfair and injurious to 
another large number, who get knowledge and 
strength enough to set up a resistance. And this, 
again, has been part of the history of every great 
society since history began. But the simple reason 
for this being, that any large body of men is likely 
to have more of stupidity, narrowness, and greed 
than of far-sightedness and generosity, it is plain 
that the number who resist unfairness and injury 
are in danger of becoming injurious in their turn. 
Essays: Address to Working Men by Felix Holt 

[76] 



SEPTEMBER FIFTH 

My work is mine, 
And, heresy or not, if my hand slacked 
I should rob God — since He is fullest good. 

Stradivarius 

SEPTEMBER SIXTH 

I can't abide to see men throw away their tools 
i' that way, the minute the clock begins to strike, 
as if they took no pleasure i' their work, and was 
afraid o' doing a stroke too much. 

Adam Bede, Ch. i 

SEPTEMBER SEVENTH 

A foreman, if he's got a conscience, and delights 
in his work, will do his business as well as if he was a 
partner. I wouldn't give a penny for a man as 'ud 
drive a nail in slack because he didn't get extra pay 
for it. 

Adam Bede, Ch. i6 

SEPTEMBER EIGHTH 

I hate to see a man's arms drop down as if he was 
shot, before the clock's fairly struck, just as if he'd 
never a bit o' pride and delight in 's work. The very 
grindstone 'uU go on turning a bit after you loose it. 

Adam Bede, Ch. i 

SEPTEMBER NINTH 

The more knowledge a man has, the better he'll 
do 's work; and feehng's a sort o' knowledge. 

Adam Bede, Ch. $2 

[77I 



SEPTEMBER TENTH 

I'd sooner ha' brewin' day and washin' day 
together than one o' these pleasurin' days. There's 
no work so tirin' as danglin' about an' starin' an' not 
rightly knowin' what you're goin' to do next; and 
keepin' your face i' smilin' order like a grocer o' 
market-day for fear people shouldna think you 
civil enough. An' you've nothing to show for't 
when it's done, if it isn't a yallow face wi' eatin' 
things as disagree. 

Adam Bede, Ch. 26 

SEPTEMBER ELEVENTH 

Of course, men know best about everything, ex- 
cept what women know better. 

Middlemarch, Ch. 72 

Men's men: gentle or simple, they're much of 
a muchness. 

Daniel Deronda, Ch. 31 

SEPTEMBER TWELFTH 

There is no escape from sordidness but by being 
free from money-craving, with all its base hopes 
and temptations, its watching for death, its hinted 
requests, its horse-dealer's desire to make bad work 
pass for good, its seeking for function which ought 
to be another's, its compulsion often to long for 
Luck in the shape of a wide calamity. 

Middlemarch, Ch. 64 

SEPTEMBER THIRTEENTH 

Our sense of duty must often wait for some work 
which shall take the place of dilettanteism and 

[78] 



make us feel that the quality of our action is not a 
matter of indifference. 

Middlemarch, Ch. 46 

SEPTEMBER FOURTEENTH 

Are there many situations more sublimely tragic 
than the struggle of the soul with the demand to 
renounce a work which has been all the significance 
of its life — a significance which is to vanish as the 
waters which come and go where no man has need 
of them? 

Middlemarch y Ch. 42 

SEPTEMBER FI^HTEENTH 

In all failures, the beginning is certainly the 
half of the whole. 

Middlemarch, Ch. 31 

SEPTEMBER SIXTEENTH 

Many things are true which only the commonest 
minds observe. 

Middlemarch, Ch. 5 

SEPTEMBER SEVENTEENTH 

It is always chilling, in friendly intercourse, to 
say you have no opinion to give. And if you de- 
liver an opinion at all, it is mere stupidity not to do 
it with an air of conviction and well-founded knowl- 
edge. You make it your own in uttering it, and 
naturally get fond of it. 

The Mill on the Floss, Bk. I, Ch. 3 

SEPTEMBER EIGHTEENTH 

Unscrupulousness gets rid of much, but not of 
toothache, or wounded vanity, or the sense of 

[79] 



loneliness, against which, as the world at present 
stands, there is no security but a thoroughly 
healthy jaw, and a just, loving soul. 

Romola, Ch. 31 

SEPTEMBER NINETEENTH 

The stronger will always rule, say some, with an 
air of confidence which is like a lawyer's flourish, 
forbidding exceptions or additions. But what is 
strength? Is it blind wilfulness that sees no ter- 
rors, no many-linked consequences, no bruises and 
wounds of those whose cords it tightens? Is it the 
narrowness of a brain that conceives no needs differ- 
ing from its own, and looks to no results beyond 
the bargains of to-day; that tugs with emphasis for 
every small purpose, and thinks it weakness to 
exercise the sublime power of resolved renunciation? 
There is a sort of subjection which is the peculiar 
heritage of largeness and of love; and strength is 
often only another name for willing bondage to 
irremediable weakness. 

Felix Holt, Ch. 6 

SEPTEMBER TWENTIETH 

The fact is, there are not many easy lots to be 
drawn in the world at present; and such as they are 
I am not envious of them, I don't say life is not 
worth having: it is worth having to a man who has 
some sparks of sense and feeling and bravery in him. 
And the finest fellow of all would be the one who 
could be glad to have lived because the world was 
chiefly miserable, and his life had come to help 
fSol 



some one who needed it. He would be the man who 
had the most powers and the fewest selfish wants. 

Felix Holt, Ch. 27 
SEPTEMBER TWENTY-FIRST 

Even a wise man generally lets some folly ooze 
out of him in his will; . . . and if a fellow has 
any spite or tyranny in him, he's likely to bottle 
off a good deal for keeping in that sort of document. 

Daniel Deronda, Ch. 59 
SEPTEMBER TWENTY-SECOND 

The Squire's 'cute enough, but it takes something 
else besides 'cuteness to make folks see what'U 
be their interest in the long-run. It takes some 
conscience and belief in right and wrong, I see that 
pretty clear. 

Adam Bede, Ch. 21 

SEPTEMBER TWENTY-THIRD 

Half the sorrows of women would be averted if 
they could repress the speech they know to be 
useless — nay, the speech they have resolved not 
to utter. 

Felix Holt, Ch. 2 
SEPTEMBER TWENTY-FOURTH 

''A woman doesn't like a man who tells her the 
truth." 

*'I think you boast a little too much of your 
truth-telling, Mr. Holt," said Esther. "That 
virtue is ipt to be easy to people when they only 
wound others and not themselves. Telling the 
truth often means no more than taking a liberty." 

Felix Holt, Ch. 10 

[81] 



SEPTEMBER TWENTY-FIFTH 

We judge others according to results; how else? — 
not knowing the process by which results are arrived 
at. 

The Mill on the Floss, Bk. VII, Ch. 2 

SEPTEMBER TWENTY-SIXTH 

Errors look so very ugly in persons of small means 
— one feels they are taking quite a liberty in going 
astray, whereas people of fortune may naturally 
indulge in a few delinquencies. "They've got the 
money for it," as the girl said of her mistress who had 
made herself ill with pickled salmon. 

Janet's Repentance, Ch. 25 

SEPTEMBER TWENTY-SEVENTH 

I fall 
Into short-sighted pity for the men 
Who living in those perfect future times 
Will not know half the dear imperfect things 
That move my smiles and tears — will never know 
The fine old incongruities that raise 
My friendly laugh; the innocent conceits 
That like a needless eyeglass or black patch. 
Give those who wear them harmless happiness. 

A Minor Prophet 

SEPTEMBER TWENTY-EIGHTH 

I have all my life had a sympathy for mongrel 
ungainly dogs, who are nobody's pets; and I would 
rather surprise one of them by a pat and a pleasant 
morsel, than meet the condescending advances of 
the loveliest Skye-terrier who has his cushion by 
[82I 



my lady's chair. That, to be sure, is not the 
way of the world: if it happens to see a fellow of 
fine proportions and aristocratic mien, who makes 
no faux pas, and wins golden opinions from all sorts 
of men, it straightway picks out for him the loveliest 
of unmarried women, and says. There would be a 
proper match! Not at all, say I: let that successful, 
well-shapen, discreet, and able gentleman put up 
with something less than the best in the matrimonial 
department; and let the sweet woman go to make 
sunshine and a soft pillow for the poor devil whose 
legs are not models, whose efforts are often blunders, 
and who in general gets more kicks than halfpence. 

Amos Barton, Ch. 2 

SEPTEMBER TWENTY-NINTH 

Family likeness has often a deep sadness in it. 
Nature, that great tragic dramatist, knits us to- 
gether by bone and muscle, and divides us by the 
subtler web of our brains; blends yearning and 
repulsion; and ties us by our heartstrings to the 
beings that jar us at every movement. We hear a 
voice with the very cadence of our own uttering 
the thoughts we despise; we see eyes — ah! so like 
our mother's — averted from us in cold alienation; 
and our last darling child startles us with the airs 
and gestures of the sister we parted from in bitter- 
ness long years ago. The father to whom we owe 
our best heritage — the mechanical instinct, the 
keen sensibility to harmony, the unconscious skill 
of the modelling hand — galls us, and puts us to 
shame by his daily errors; the long-lost mother, 

[83] 



whose face we begin to see in the glass as our own 
wrinkles come, once fretted our young souls with 
her anxious humors and irrational persistence. 

Adam Bede, Ch. 4 

SEPTEMBER THIRTIETH 

Conscience is harder than our enemies, 
Knows more, accuses with more nicety, 
Nor needs to question Rumor if we fall 
Below the perfect model of our thought. 
I fear no outward arbiter. 

The Spanish Gypsy, Bk, I 



84 



flDctober 

OCTOBER FIRST 

A BOY'S sheepishness is by no means a sign of 
overmastering reverence; and while you are 
making encouraging advances to him under the idea 
that he is overwhelmed by a sense of your age and 
wisdom, ten to one he is thinking you extremely 
queer. The only consolation I can suggest to you is, 
that the Greek boys probably thought the same of 
Aristotle. It is only when you have mastered a 
restive horse, or thrashed a drayman, or have got a 
gun in your hand, that these shy juniors feel you to 
be a truly admirable and enviable character. 

The Mill on the Floss, Bk. /, Ch. 9 
OCTOBER SECOND 

Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, 
abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact — 
from calling on us to look through a heap of millet- 
seed in order to be sure that there is no pearl in it. 

Theophrastus Such, Ch. 4 
OCTOBER THIRD 

When we are suddenly released from an acute 
absorbing bodily pain, our heart and senses leap 
out in new freedom; we think even the noise of 
streets harmonious, and are ready to hug the 
tradesman who is wrapping up our change. 

JaneCs Repentance, Ch. 22 

[85] 



OCTOBER FOURTH 

The exhaustion consequent on violent emotion is 
apt to bring a dreamy disbelief in the reality of its 

cause. 

Romola, Ch. 36 

OCTOBER FIFTH 

A diffident man likes the idea of doing something 
remarkable, which will create belief in him without 
any immediate display of brilliancy. Celebrity may 
blush and be silent, and win a grace the more. 

Felix Holt, Ch. 23 

OCTOBER SIXTH 

We mortals sometimes cut a pitiable figure in our 
attempts at display. We may be sure of our own 
merits, yet fatally ignorant of the point of view from 
which we are regarded by our neighbor. Our fine 
patterns in tattooing may be far from throwing him 
into a swoon of admiration, though we turn our- 
selves all round to show them. 

Felix Holt, Ch. 11 

OCTOBER SEVENTH 

''All choice of words is slang. It marks a class.'* 

''There is correct EngHsh: that is not slang." 

"I beg your pardon: correct English is the slang 

of prigs who write history and essays. And the 

strongest slang of all is the slang of poets." 

Middlemarch, Ch. 11 

OCTOBER EIGHTH 

Strangers, whether wrecked and clinging to a 
raft, or duly escorted and accompanied by port- 
[86] 



manteaus, have always had a circumstantial fascina- 
tion for the virgin mind, against which native merit 
has urged itself in vain. 

Middlemarch, Ch. 12 

OCTOBER NINTH 

People who live at a distance are naturally less 
faulty than those immediately under our own eyes; 
and it seems superfluous, when we consider the 
remote geographical position of the Ethiopians, and 
how very little the Greeks had to do with them, to 
inquire further why Homer calls them ''blameless.'* 
The Mill on the Floss, Bk. Ill, Ch. 3 

OCTOBER TENTH 

Scenes which make vital changes in our neighbors' 
lot are but the background of our own; yet, like 
a particular aspect of the fields and trees, they 
become associated for us with the epochs of our 
own history, and make a part of that unity which 
lies in the selection of our keenest consciousness. 

Middlemarch, Ch. 34 

OCTOBER ELEVENTH 

The soul of man, when it gets fairly rotten, will 
bear you all sorts of poisonous toadstools, and no 
eye can see whence came the seed thereof. 

Middlemarch, Ch. 40 

OCTOBER TWELFTH 

The driest argument has its hallucinations, too 
hastily concluding that its net will not at last be 
large enough to hold the universe. Men may dream 
in demonstrations, and cut out an illusory world 

[87] 



in the shape of axioms, definitions, and propositions, 
with a final exclusion of fact signed Q. E. D. No 
formulas for thinking will save us mortals from 
mistake in our imperfect apprehension of the matter 
to be thought about. And since the unemotional 
intellect may carry us into a mathematical dream- 
land where nothing is but what is not, perhaps 
an emotional intellect may have absorbed into its 
passionate vision of possibilities some truth of what 
will be — the more comprehensive massive life 
feeding theory with new material, as the sensibility 
of the artist seizes combinations which science 
explains and justifies. At any rate, presumptions 
to the contrary are not to be trusted. We must be 
patient with the inevitable makeshift of our human 
thinking, whether in its sum total or in the sepa- 
rate minds that have made the sum. Columbus 
had some impressions about himself which we call 
superstitions, and used some arguments which we 
disapprove; but he had also some true physical 
conceptions, and he had the passionate patience 
of genius to make them tell on mankind. The 
world has made up its mind rather contemptuously 
about those who were deaf to Columbus. 

Daniel Deronda, Ch. 41 

OCTOBER THIRTEENTH 

If we use common words on a great occasion, they 
are the more striking, because they are felt at once 
to have a particular meaning, like old banners, or 
everyday clothes, hung up in a sacred place. 

The Mill on the Floss, Bk. VI, Ch. 2 



OCTOBER FOURTEENTH 

A man conscious of enthusiasm for worthy aims 
is sustained under petty hostilities by the memory 
of great workers who had to fight their way not 
without wounds, and who hover in his mind as 
patron saints, invisibly helping. 

Middlemarch, Ch. 45 

OCTOBER FIFTEENTH 

A man with the milk of human kindness in him 
can scarcely abstain from doing a good-natured 
action, and one cannot be good-natured all round. 
Nature herself occasionally quarters an inconvenient 
parasite on an animal towards whom she has other- 
wise no ill-will. What then? We admire her care 
for the parasite. 

The Mill on the Floss, Bk. /, Ch. 3 

OCTOBER SIXTEENTH 

Since they could remember, there had been a 
mixture of criticism and awe in the attitude of 
Celia's mind towards her elder sister. The younger 
had always worn a yoke; but is there any yoked 
creature without its private opinions? 

Middlemarch, Ch. i 

OCTOBER SEVENTEENTH 

But it is one thing to Hke defiance, and another 
thing to like its consequences. 

Middlemarch, Ch. 46 

OCTOBER EIGHTEENTH 

Lydgate was in debt; and he could not succeed 
in keeping out of his mind for long together that he 

[89] 



was every day getting deeper into that swamp, 
which tempts men towards it with such a pretty 
covering of flowers and verdure. It is wonderful 
how soon a man gets up to his chin there — in a 
condition in which, spite of himself, he is forced 
to think chiefly of release, though he had a scheme of 
the universe in his soul. 

Middlemarch, Ch. 58 

OCTOBER NINETEENTH 

Who can know how much of his most inward life 
is made up of the thoughts he beheves other men to 
have about him, until that fabric of opinion is 
threatened with ruin? 

Middlemarch, Ch. 68 

OCTOBER TWENTIETH 

People glorify all sorts of bravery except the 
bravery they might show on behalf of their nearest 
neighbors. 

Middlemarch, Ch. 72 

OCTOBER TWENTY-FIRST 

But I wasn't worth doing wrong for — nothing 
is in this world. Nothing is so good as it seems 
beforehand. 

Silas Marner, Ch. 18 

OCTOBER TWENTY-SECOND 

There is a sort of human paste that when it comes 
near the fire of enthusiasm is only baked into 
harder shape. 

Daniel Dcronda, Ch. 42 

[90] 



OCTOBER TWENTY-THIRD 

Much of our lives is spent in marring our own 
influence and turning others' beHef in us into a 
widely concluding unbelief which they call knowledge 
of the world, while it is really disappointment in 

^ ' Daniel Deronda, Ch. 64 

OCTOBER TWENTY-FOURTH 

It is to be beheved that attendance at the opera 
bouffe in the present day would not leave men's 
minds entirely without shock, if the manners 
observed there with some applause were suddenly 
to start up in their own families. Perspective, as 
its inventor remarked, is a beautiful thing. What 
horrors of damp huts, where human beings languish, 
may not become picturesque through aerial distance! 
What hymning of cancerous vices may we not 
languish over as sublimest art in the safe remoteness 
of a strange language and artificial phrase! Yet 
we keep a repugnance to rheumatism and other 
painful effects when presented in our personal 

^ * Daniel Deronda, Ch. 14 

OCTOBER TWENTY-FIFTH 

Milk and mildness are not the best things for 
keeping, and when they turn only a little sour, they 
may disagree with young stomachs seriously. I 
have often wondered whether those early Madonnas 
of Raphael, with the blond faces and somewhat 
stupid expression, kept their placidity undisturbed 
when their strong-limbed, strong-willed boys got 
a little too old to do without clothing. I think they 

[91] 



must have been given to feeble remonstrance, 
getting more and more peevish as it became more 
and more ineffectual. 

The Mill on the Floss, Bk. I, Ch. 2 

OCTOBER TWENTY-SIXTH 

A man with a definite will and an energetic per- 
sonality acts as a sort of flag to draw and bind 
together the fooUsh units of a mob. 

Felix Holt, Ch. 23 

OCTOBER TWENTY-SEVENTH 

The persons who are the most incapable of a 
conscientious struggle are precisely those who will 
be likely to shrink from you, because they will not 
believe in your struggle. 

The Mill on the Floss, Bk. VII, Ch. 2 

OCTOBER TWENTY-EIGHTH 

It is of such stuff that superstitions are commonly 
made: an intense feeling about ourselves which 
makes the evening star shine at us with a threat, 
and the blessing of a beggar encourage us. And 
superstitions carry consequences which often verify 
their hope of their foreboding. 

Daniel Deronda, Ch. 29 

OCTOBER TWENTY-NINTH 

There has been no great people without proces- 
sions, and the man who thinks himself too wise to be 
moved by them to anything but contempt, is like 
the puddle that was proud of standing alone while 
the river rushed by. 

Romola, Ch. 8 

I92] 



OCTOBER THIRTIETH 

Our consciences are not all of the same pattern, 
an inner deliverance of fixed laws: they are the voice 
of sensibilities as various as our memories (which 
also have their kinship and likeness). 

Daniel Deronda, Ch. 41 

OCTOBER THIRTY-FIRST 

Now awful Night, 
The prime ancestral mystery, came down. 

The Spanish Gypsy, Bk. IV 

Life is not rounded in an epigram. 

And saying aught, we leave a world unsaid. 

Armgart, Sc. 2 



93] 



BoUmhtv 

NOVEMBER FIRST 

THERE is a law in music, disobedience where- 
unto would bring us in our singing to the level 
of shrieking maniacs or howling beasts : so that herein 
we are well instructed how true liberty can be naught 
but the transfer of obedience from the will of one 
or of a few men to that will which is the norm or 
rule for all men. And though the transfer may 
sometimes be but an erroneous direction of search, 
yet is the search good and necessary to the ultimate 
finding. And even as in music, where all obey and 
concur to one end, so that each has the joy of con- 
tributing to a whole whereby he is ravished and 
lifted up into the courts of heaven, so will it be in 
that crowning time of the millennial reign, when 
our daily prayer will be fulfilled, and one law shall 
be written on all hearts, and be the very structure 
of all thought, and be the principle of all action. 

Felix Holt, Ch. 13 

NOVEMBER SECOND 

To be a poet is to have a soul so quick to discern 
that no shade of quality escapes it, and so quick to 
feel, that discernment is but a hand playing with 
finely ordered variety on the chords of emotion — 
a soul in which knowledge passes instantaneously 
into feeling, and feeling flashes back as a new organ of 

[95] 



knowledge. One may have that condition by fits 
only. 

Middlemarch, Ch. 22 

NOVEMBER THIRD 

'Tis a vile life that like a garden pool 

Lies stagnant in the round of personal loves: 

That has no ear save for the tickUng lute 

Set to small measures — deaf to all the beats 

Of that large music rolling o'er the world: 

A miserable, petty, low-roofed life, 

That knows the mighty orbits of the skies 

Through naught save light or dark in its own cabin. 

The very brutes will feel the force of kind 

And move together, gathering a new soul — 

The soul of multitudes. 

The Spanish Gypsy, Bk. Ill 

NOVEMBER FOURTH 

No man has too much talent to be a musician. 
Most men have too httle. A creative artist is no 
more a mere musician than a great statesman is a 
mere politician. We are not ingenious puppets, 
sir, who Hve in a box and look out on the world 
only when it is gaping for amusement. We help 
to rule the nations and make the age as much as 
any other public men. We count ourselves on 
level benches with legislators. And a man who 
speaks effectively through music is compelled to 
something more difficult than parliamentary elo- 
quence. 

Daniel Deronda, Ch. 22 

[06] 



NOVEMBER FIFTH 

We are all of us made more graceful by the in- 
ward presence of what we believe to be a generous 
purpose; our actions move to a hidden music — '^a 
melody that's sweetly played in tune." 

Felix Holt, Ch. 45 

NOVEMBER SIXTH 
Full souls are double mirrors, making still 
An endless vista of fair things before 
Repeating things behind: so faith is strong 
Only when we are strong, shrinks when we shrink. 
It comes when music stirs us, and the chords 
Moving on some grand climax shake our souls 
With influx new that makes new energies. 
It comes in swellings of the heart and tears 
That rise at noble and at gentle deeds — 
At labors of the master-artist's hand 
Which, trembling, touches to a finer end. 
Trembling before an image seen within. 
It comes in moments of heroic love, 
Un jealous joy in joy not made for us — 
In conscious triumph of the good within 
Making us worship goodness that rebukes. 

A Minor Prophet 

NOVEMBER SEVENTH 

Blessed influence of one true loving human soul 
on another! Not calculable by algebra, not de- 
ducible by logic, but mysterious, effectual, mighty 
as the hidden process by which the tiny seed is 
quickened, and bursts forth into tall stem and broad 
leaf, and glowing tasselled flower. Ideas are often 

1971 



poor ghosts; our sun-filled eyes cannot discern them; 
they pass athwart us in thin vapor, and cannot make 
themselves felt. But sometimes they are made 
flesh; they breathe upon us with warm breath, they 
touch us with soft responsive hands, they look at 
us with sad sincere eyes, and speak to us in appealing 
tones; they are clothed in a living human soul, 
with all its conflicts, its faith, and its love. Then 
their presence is a power, then they shake us like 
a passion, and we are drawn after them with gentle 
compulsion, as flame is drawn to flame. 

Janet's Repentance, Ch. 20 

NOVEMBER EIGHTH 

That idea of duty, that recognition of something 
to be lived for beyond the mere satisfaction of 
self, ... is to the moral life what the addition of 
a great central ganglion is to animal life. No man 
can begin to mould himself on a faith or an idea 
without rising to a higher order of experience: a 
principle of subordination, of self-mastery, has 
been introduced into his nature; he is no longer a 
mere bundle of impressions, desires, and impulses. 
Whatever might be the weaknesses of the ladies who 
pruned the luxuriance of their lace and ribbons, 
cut out garments for the poor, distributed tracts, 
quoted Scripture, and defined the true Gospel, 
they had learned this — that there was a divine work 
to be done in life, a rule of goodness higher than the 
opinion of their neighbors; and if the notion of a 
heaven in reserve for themselves was a little too 
prominent, yet the theory of fitness for that heaven 



consisted in purity of heart, in Christlike compassion, 
in the subduing of selfish desires. They might give 
the name of piety to much that was only puritanic 
egoism; they might call many things sin that were not 
sin; but they had at least the feeling that sin was 
to be avoided and resisted, and color-blindness 
which may mistake drab for scarlet, is better than 
total blindness, which sees no distinction of color 
at all. 

Janet's Repentance y Ch. lo 

NOVEMBER NINTH 

A man's a man; 
But when you see a king, you see the work 
Of many thousand men. 

The Spanish Gypsy, Bk. I 

NOVEMBER TENTH 

Indeed, what mortal is there of us, who would 
find his satisfaction enhanced by an opportunity of 
comparing the picture he presents to himself of 
his own doings, with the picture they make on the 
mental retina of his neighbors? We are poor plants 
buoyed up by the air-vessels of our own conceit: 
alas for us, if we get a few pinches that empty us 
of that windy self-subsistence! The very capacity 
for good would go out of us. For, tell the most 
impassioned orator, suddenly, that his wig is awry, 
or his shirt-lap hanging out, and that he is tickling 
people by the oddity of his person, instead of thrilling 
them by the energy of his periods, and you would 
infallibly dry up the spring of his eloquence. That 

[99] 



is a deep and wide saying, that no miracle can be 
wrought without faith — without the worker's 
faith in himself, as well as the recipient's faith in 
him. And the greater part of the worker's faith in 
himself is made up of the faith that others believe 
in him. 

Let me be persuaded that my neighbor Jenkins 
considers me a blockhead, and I shall never shine 
in conversation with him any more. Let me dis- 
cover that the lovely Phoebe thinks my squint 
intolerable, and I shall never be able to fix her 
blandly with my disengaged eye again. 

Thank heaven, then, that a little illusion is left 
to us, to enable us to be useful and agreeable — that 
we don't know exactly what our friends think of us — 
that the world is not made of looking-glass, to show 
us just the figure we are making, and just what is 
going on behind our backs! By the help of dear 
friendly illusion, we are able to dream that we are 
charming — and our faces wear a becoming air of 
self-possession; we are able to dream that other 
men admire our talents — and our benignity is 
undisturbed ; we are able to dream that we are doing 
much good — and we do a little. 

Amos Barton, Ch. 2 

NOVEMBER ELEVENTH 

For strong souls 
Live like fire-hearted suns to spend their strength 
In farthest striving action; breathe more free 
In mighty anguish than in trivial ease. 

The Spanish Gypsy, Bk. IV 
[100] 



NOVEMBER TWELFTH 

"Nothing," says Goethe, "is more significant of 
men's character than what they find laughable." The 
truth of this observation would perhaps have been 
more apparent if he had said culture instead of 
character. The last thing in which the cultivated 
man can have community with the vulgar is their 
jocularity; and we can hardly exhibit more strikingly 
the wide gulf which separates him from them than 
by comparing the object which shakes the dia- 
phragm of a coal-heaver with the highly complex 
pleasure derived from a real witticism. 

Essays: German Wit 

NOVEMBER THIRTEENTH 

Oh, sir, 'twas that mixture of spite and over-fed 
merriment which passes for humor with the vulgar. 
In their fun they have much resemblance to a 
turkey-cock. It has a cruel beak, and a silly itera- 
tion of ugly sounds; it spreads its tail in self- 
glorification, but shows you the wrong side of that 
ornament — liking admiration, but knowing not 
what is admirable. 

Felix Holt, Ch. 12, Motto 

NOVEMBER FOURTEENTH 

If we demand more leisure, more ease in our lives, 
let us show that we don't deserve the reproach of 
wanting to shirk that industry which, in some form 
or other, every man, whether rich or poor, should 
feel himself as much bound to as he is bound to 
decency. Let us show that we want to have some 
time and strength left to us, that we may use it, 

[lOl] 



not for brutal indulgence, but for the rational exer- 
cise of the faculties which make us men. 

Essays: Address to Working Men by Felix Holt 

NOVEMBER FIFTEENTH 

Perhaps the moment of most diffusive pleasure 
from public speaking is that in which the speech 
ceases and the audience can turn to commenting on 
it. The one speech, sometimes uttered under great 
responsibility as to missiles and other consequences, 
has given a text to twenty speakers who are under 
no responsibility. Even in the days of duelling a 
man was not challenged for being a bore, nor does 
this quality apparently hinder him from being much 
invited to dinner, which is the great index of social 
responsibility in a less barbarous age. 

Felix Holt, Ch. 19 

NOVEMBER SIXTEENTH 

Emotion links itself with particulars, and only 
in a faint and secondary manner with abstractions. 
An orator may discourse very eloquently on injustice 
in general, and leave his audience cold; but let him 
state a special case of oppression, and every heart 
will throb. The most untheoretic persons are aware 
of this relation between true emotion and particular 
facts, as opposed to general terms, and impHcitly 
recognize it in the repulsion they feel towards any 
one who professes strong feeling about abstractions, 
— in the interjectional "Humbug!" which imme- 
diately rises to their lips. 

Essays: Worldliness and Other-Worldliness 
I 102 ] 



NOVEMBER SEVENTEENTH 

The secret of oratory lies, not in saying new things, 
but in saying things with a certain power that moves 
the hearers. 

Romola, Ch. i6 

NOVEMBER EIGHTEENTH 

Hopes have precarious Hfe. 
They are oft blighted, withered, snapped sheer ofl 
In vigorous growth and turned to rottenness. 
But faithfulness can feed on suffering, 
And knows no disappointment. Trust in me ! 

The Spanish Gypsy, Bk. Ill 

NOVEMBER NINETEENTH 

A man with an affectionate disposition, who finds 
a wife to concur with his fundamental idea of life, 
easily comes to persuade himself that no other 
woman would have suited him so well, and does a 
little daily snapping and quarrelling without any 
sense of alienation. 

The Mill on the Floss, Bk. I, Ch. 12 

NOVEMBER TWENTIETH 

Those who have been indulged by fortune and have 
always thought of calamity as what happens to 
others, feel a blind, incredulous rage at the reversal 
of their lot, and half believe that their wild cries 
will alter the course of the storm. 

Daniel Deronda, Ch. 61 

NOVEMBER TWENTY-FIRST 

I tell you there isn't a thing under the sun that 
needs to be done at all, but what a man can do better 
[103] 



than a woman, unless it's bearing children, and they 
do that in a poor makeshift way; it had better ha' 
been left to the men. 

Adam Bede, Ch. 21 

NOVEMBER TWENTY-SECOND 

''But it is very difficult to be learned; it seems 
as if people were worn out on the way to great 
thoughts, and can never enjoy them because they 
are too tired." 

"If a man has a capacity for great thoughts, he 
is likely to overtake them before he is decrepit," 
said Will, with irrepressible quickness. 

Middletnarch, Ch. 37 

NOVEMBER TWENTY-THIRD 

I feel so set up and comfortable as niver was, 
when I've been and heard the prayers, and the 
singing to the praise and glory o' God, as Mr. Macey 
gives out — and Mr. Crackenthorp saying good 
words, and more partic'lar on Sacramen' Day; 
and if a bit o' trouble comes, I feel as I can put up 
wi' it, for I've looked for help i' the right quarter, 
and gev myself up to Them as we must all give our- 
selves up to at the last; and if we'n done our part, 
it isn't to be believed as Them as are above us 'ull 
be worse nor we are, and come short o' Their'n. 

Silas Marner, Ch. 10 

NOVEMBER TWENTY-FOURTH 

I suppose one reason why we are seldom able to 
comfort our neighbors with our words is that our 
good- will gets adulterated, in spite of ourselves, 
[ 104] 



before it can pass our lips. We can send black 
puddings and pettitoes without giving them a flavor 
of our own egoism; but language is a stream that is 
almost sure to smack of a mingled soil. 

Silas Marner, Ch. lo 

NOVEMBER TWENTY-FIFTH 

There is no sorrow I have thought more about 
than that — to love what is great, and try to reach 
it, and yet to fail. 

Middlentarch, Ch. 76 

NOVEMBER TWENTY-SIXTH 

Does any one suppose that private prayer is 
necessarily candid — necessarily goes to the roots 
of action? Private prayer is inaudible speech, and 
speech is representative: who can represent himself 
just as he is, even in his own reflections? 

Middlemarch, Ch. 70 

NOVEMBER TWENTY-SEVENTH 

As to speaking, I hold it a crime to expose a man's 
sin unless I'm clear it must be done to save the 
innocent. 

Middlemarch, Ch. 69 

NOVEMBER TWENTY-EIGHTH 

Imagine Jean Jacques, after his essay on the 
corrupting influence of the arts, waking up among 
children of nature who had no ideas of grilling the 
raw bone they offered him for breakfast with the 
primitive flint knife; or Saint Just, after fervidly 
denouncing all recognition of preeminence, receiv- 
ing a vote of thanks for the unbroken mediocrity 

[1051 



of his speech, which warranted the dullest patriots 
in delivering themselves at equal length. ... It 
is hard for us to live up to our own eloquence, and 
keep pace with our winged words, while we are 
treading the solid earth and are liable to heavy 
dining. 

Daniel Deronda, Ch. 22 

NOVEMBER TWENTY-NINTH 

To most mortals there is a stupidity which is 
unendurable and a stupidity which is altogether 
acceptable — else, indeed, what would become of 
social bonds? 

Middlemarch, Ch. 58 

NOVEMBER THIRTIETH 

Blows are sarcasms turned stupid: wit is a form 
of force that leaves the limbs at rest. 

Felix Holt, Ch. 30 



[106] 



DECEMBER FIRST 

A TALLOW dip, of the long-eight description, is 
an excellent thing in the kitchen candlestick, 
and Betty's nose and eye are not sensitive to the 
difference between it and the finest wax; it is only 
when you stick it in the silver candlestick, and 
introduce it into the drawing-room, that it seems 
plebeian, dim, and ineffectual. Alas for the worthy 
man who, like the candle, gets himself into the 
wrong place! It is only the very largest souls who 
will be able to appreciate and pity him — who will 
discern and love sincerity of purpose amid all the 
bungling feebleness of achievement. 

Amos Barton, Ch. 2 



DECEMBER SECOND 

Play not with paradoxes. That caustic which 
you handle in order to scorch others, may happen to' 
sear your own fingers and make them dead to the 
quality of things. 'Tis difficult enough to see our 
way and keep our torch steady in this dim labyrinth: 
to whirl the torch and dazzle the eyes of our fellow- 
seekers is a poor daring, and may end in total 
darkness. You yourself are a lover of freedom, and 
a bold rebel against usurping authority. But the 
right to rebellion is the right to seek a higher rule, 

[107] 



and not to wander in mere lawlessness. Wherefore, 
I beseech you, seem not to say that liberty is license. 

Felix Holt, Ch. 13 

DECEMBER THIRD 

It is apt to be so in this life, I think. While we are 
coldly discussing a man's career, sneering at his 
mistakes, blaming his rashness, and labelling his 
opinions — "Evangelical and narrow," or ''Latitudi- 
narian and Pantheistic," or "Anglican and super- 
cilious" — that man, in his sohtude, is perhaps 
shedding hot tears because his sacrifice is a hard one, 
because strength and patience are failing him to 
speak the difficult word, and do the difficult deed. 

Janet's Repentance, Ch. 8 

DECEMBER FOURTH 

As long as we set up our own will and our own 
wisdom against God's, we make that wall between 
us and His love which I have spoken of just now. 
But as soon as we lay ourselves entirely at His 
feet, we have enough light given us to guide our 
own steps; as the foot-soldier who hears nothing 
'of the councils that determine the course of the 
great battle he is in, hears plainly enough the word 
of command which he must himself obey. 

Janet's Repentance, Ch. 18 

DECEMBER FIFTH 

Much quotation of any sort, even in Enghsh, is 
bad. It tends to choke ordinary remark. One 
couldn't carry on life comfortably without a little 
[108I 



blindness to the fact that everything has been said 
better than we can put it ourselves. 

Daniel Deronda, Ch. i6 

DECEMBER SIXTH 

Some one highly susceptible to the contemplation 
of a fine act has said that it produces a sort of 
regenerating shudder through the frame, and makes 
one feel ready to begin a new life. 

Middlemarch, Ch. 66 

DECEMBER SEVENTH 

The tragedy of our lives is not created entirely 
from within. ''Character," says NovaHs, in one 
of his questionable aphorisms, — ''character is 
destiny." But not the whole of our destiny. Ham- 
let, Prince of Denmark, was speculative and irreso- 
lute, and we have a great tragedy in consequence. 
But if his father had lived to a good old age, and 
his uncle had died an early death, we can conceive 
Hamlet's having married Ophelia, and got through 
life with a reputation of sanity, notwithstanding 
many soliloquies, and some moody sarcasms towards 
the fair daughter of Polonius, to say nothing of the 
frankest incivility to his father-in-law. 

The Mill on the Floss, Bk. VI, Ch. 6 

DECEMBER EIGHTH 

Ignorance is not so damnable as humbug, but 
when it prescribes pills it may happen to do more 
harm. 

Felix Holt, Ch. 5 
[109] 



DECEMBER NINTH 

There was a chance, if she had married Sir James, 
of her becoming a sane, sensible woman. He would 
never have contradicted her, and when a woman is 
not contradicted, she has no motive for obstinacy 
in her absurdities. 

Middlemarch, Ch. 6 

DECEMBER TENTH 

Any one watching keenly the stealthy convergence 
of human lots, sees a slow preparation of effects 
from one life on another, which tells Hke a calculated 
irony on the indifference or the frozen stare with 
which we look at our unintroduced neighbor. Des- 
tiny stands by sarcastic with our dramatis personcB 
folded in her hand. 

Middlemarch, Ch. ii 

DECEMBER ELEVENTH 

Do we not shun the street version of a fine melody? 
— or shrink from the news that the rarity — some 
bit of chiselling or engraving perhaps — which we 
have dwelt on even with exultation in the trouble 
it has cost us to snatch glimpses of it, is really not 
an uncommon thing, and may be obtained as an 
everyday possession? Our good depends on the 
quality and breadth of our emotion. 

Middlemarch, Ch. 47 

DECEMBER TWELFTH 

A man vows, and yet will not cast away the 

means of breaking his vow. Is it that he distinctly 

means to break it? Not at all; but the desires 

which tend to break it are at work in him dimly, 

[no] 



and make their way into his imagination, and relax 
his muscles in the very moments when he is telling 
himself over again the reasons for his vow. 

Middlemarch, Ch. 70 

DECEMBER THIRTEENTH 

Men and women make sad mistakes about their 
own symptoms, taking their vague uneasy longings, 
sometimes for genius, sometimes for religion, and 
oftener still for a mighty love. 

Middlemarch, Ch. 75 

DECEMBER FOURTEENTH 

In old days there were angels who came and took 
men by the hand and led them away from the city 
of destruction. We see no white- winged angels 
now. But yet men are led away from threatening 
destruction: a hand is put into theirs, which leads 
them forth gently towards a calm and bright land, 
so that they look no more backward; and the hand 
may be a little child's. 

Silas Marner, Ch. 14 

DECEMBER FIFTEENTH 

The vindication of the loved object is the best 
balm affection can find for its wounds: — "A man 
must have so much on his mind," is the belief by 
which a wife often supports a cheerful face under 
rough answers and unfeeling words. 

Silas Marner, Ch. 17 

DECEMBER SIXTEENTH 

" No, friend, I am not a servant; I am a scholar." 
There are men to whom you need only say, "I 
[hi] 



am a buffalo," in a certain tone of quiet confidence, 
and they will let you pass. 

Romola, Ch. 38 

DECEMBER SEVENTEENTH 

Our deeds are like children that are born to us; 
they live and act apart from our own will. Nay, 
children may be strangled, but deeds never: they 
have an indestructible life both in and out of our 
consciousness. 

Romola, Ch. 16 

DECEMBER EIGHTEENTH 

Consequences are unpitying. Our deeds carry 
their terrible consequences, quite apart from any 
fluctuations that went before — consequences that 
are hardly ever confined to ourselves. And it is 
best to fix our minds on that certainty, instead of 
considering what may be the elements of excuse 
for us. 

Adam Bede, Ch. 16 

DECEMBER NINETEENTH 

It is one thing to be resolute in placing one's self 
out of the question, and another to endure that 
others should perform that exclusion for us. 

Daniel Deronda, Ch. 37 

DECEMBER TWENTIETH 

The energy that would animate a crime is not 
more than is wanted to inspire a resolved submission, 
when the noble habit of the soul reasserts itself. 

Middlemarch, Ch. 42 

[112] 



DECEMBER TWENTY-FIRST 

We are often unable to act on our certainties; 
our objection to a contrary issue (were it possible) 
is so strong that it rises like a spectral illusion be- 
tween us and our certainty: we are rationally sure 
that the blind-worm cannot bite us mortally, but it 
would be so intolerable to be bitten, and the creature 
has a biting look — we decline to handle it. 

Daniel Deronda, Ck. 13 



DECEMBER TWENTY-SECOND 

There is no sense of ease like the ease we felt in 
those scenes where we were born, where objects 
became dear to us before we had known the labor 
of choice, and where the outer world seemed only 
an extension of our own personality; we accepted 
and loved it as we accepted our own sense of exist- 
ence and our own limbs. Very commonplace, even 
ugly, that furniture of our early home might look 
if it were put up to auction; an improved taste in 
upholstery scorns it; and is not the striving after 
something better and better in our surroundings 
the grand characteristic that distinguishes man 
from the brute, or, to satisfy a scrupulous accuracy 
of definition, that distinguishes the British man from 
the foreign brute? But heaven knows where that 
striving might lead us, if our affections had not a 
trick of twining round those old inferior things; 
if the loves and sanctities of our life had no deep 
immovable roots in memory. 

The Mill on the Floss, Bk. II, Ch. 2 

\ 113 ] 



DECEMBER TWENTY-THIRD 

One must be poor to know the luxury of giving! 

Middlemarch, Ch. 17 
DECEMBER TWENTY-FOURTH 

Christmas puddings, brawn, and abundance 
of spirituous liquors, throwing the mental original- 
ity into the channel of nightmare, are great pre- 
servatives against a dangerous spontaneity of 
waking thought. 

Silas Marner, Ch. 10 

DECEMBER TWENTY-FIFTH 

But now, upo' Christmas Day, this blessed 
Christmas as is ever coming, if you was to take your 
dinner to the bakehus, and go to church, and see 
the holly and the yew, and hear the anthim, and then 
take the sacramen', you'd be a deal the better, 
and you'd know which end you stood on, and you 
could put your trust i' Them as knows better nor we 
do, seein' you'd ha' done what it lies on us all to do. 

There's no other music equil to the Christmas 
music — "Hark the erol angils sing." And you 
may judge what it is at church, Master Marner, 
with the bassoon and the voices, as you can't help 
thinking you've got to a better place a'ready — for 
I wouldn't speak ill o' this world, seeing as Them 
put us in it as knows best. 

Silas Marner, Ch. 10 

DECEMBER TWENTY-SIXTH 

I bear in mind this: the Lord knoweth them that 
are His; but we — we are left to judge by uncertain 

[1141 



signs, that so we may learn to exercise hope and 
faith towards one another; and in this uncertainty 
I cHng with awful hope to those whom the world 
loves not because their conscience, albeit mistakenly, 
is at war with the habits of the world. Our great 
faith, my Esther, is the faith of martyrs: I will not 
lightly turn away from any man who endures 
harshness because he will not He; nay, though I 
would not wantonly grasp at ease of mind through 
an arbitrary choice of doctrine, I cannot but believe 
that the merits of the Divine Sacrifice are wider 
than our utmost charity. I once believed otherwise 
— but not now, not now. 

Felix Holt, Ch. 37 

DECEMBER TWENTY-SEVENTH 

"You are thoroughly mistaken," said Felix. 
*'It is just because I'm a very ambitious fellow, 
with very hungry passions, wanting a great deal to 
satisfy me, that I have chosen to give up what 
people call worldly good. At least that has been 
one determining reason. It all depends on what a 
man gets into his consciousness — what life thrusts 
into his mind, so that it becomes present to him 
as remorse is present to the guilty, or a mechanical 
problem to an inventive genius. There are two 
things I've got present in that way: one of them is 
the picture of what I should hate to be. I'm de- 
termined never to go about making my face simper- 
ing or solemn, and telling professional lies for profit; 
or to get tangled in affairs where I must wink at 
dishonesty and pocket the proceeds, and justify 
[lis] 



that knavery as part of a system that I can't alter. 
If I once went into that sort of struggle for success, 
I should want to win — I should defend the wrong 
that I had once identified myself with. I should 
become everything that I see now beforehand to 
be detestable. And what's more, I should do this, 
as men are doing it every day, for a ridiculously 
small prize — perhaps for none at all — perhaps for 
the sake of two parlors, a rank eligible for the 
church wardenship, a discontented wife, and several 
unhopeful children." 

Felix Holt, Ch. 27 

DECEMBER TWENTY-EIGHTH 

I think all lines of the human face have something 
either touching or grand, unless they seem to come 
from low passions. How fine old men are, like my 
godfather! Why should not old women look grand 
and simple? 

" Romola, Ch. 51 

DECEMBER TWENTY-NINTH 

Youth thinks itself the goal of each old life; 
Age has but travelled from a far-off time 
Just to be ready for youth's service. 

Armgart, Sc. $ 

When the commonplace "We must all die" 
transforms itself suddenly into the acute conscious- 
ness "I must die — and soon," then death grapples 
us, and his fingers are cruel; afterwards, he may 
come to fold us in his arms as our mother did, and 

[1161 



our last moment of dim earthly discerning may be 
like the first. 

Middlemarch, Ch. 42 

DECEMBER THIRTIETH 

It's very blessed on a bleak cold day when the sky 
is hanging dark over the hill, to feel the love of God 
in one's soul, and carry it to the lonely, bare stone 
houses, where there's nothing else to give comfort. 

Adam Bede, Ch. 11 

DECEMBER THIRTY-FIRST 

Two angels guide 
The path of man, both aged and yet young. 
As angels are, ripening through endless years. 
On one he leans: some call her Memory, 
And some. Tradition; and her voice is sweet, 
With deep mysterious accords: the other. 
Floating above, holds down a lamp which streams 
A light divine and searching on the earth. 
Compelling 'eyes and footsteps. Memory yields, 
Yet clings with loving check, and shines anew 
Reflecting all the rays of that bright lamp 
Our angel Reason holds. We had not walked 
But for Tradition; we walk evermore 
To higher paths, by brightening Reason's lamp. 

The Spanish Gypsy, Bk. II 



[117] 



O may I join the choir invisible 

Of those immortal dead who live again 

In minds made better by their presence: live 

In pulses stirred to generosity, 

In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn 

For miserable aims that end with self, 

In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, 

And with their mild persistence urge man's search 

To vaster issues. 

May I reach 
That purest heaven, be to other souls 
The cup of strength in some great agony, 
Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love, 
Beget the smiles that have no cruelty — 
Be the sweet presence of a good diffused, 
And in diffusion ever more intense. 
So shall I join the choir invisible 
Whose music is the gladness of the world. 






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